 
TAKE ME TO PARADISE

Jan Cornall

Smashwords edition 2014, copyright 2006 Jan Cornall

Dedicated to all those

dreaming of discovering

their own paradise on earth.

Contents

Start of Take Me to Paradise

About the author

Acknowledgments

Credits

Copyright

1

Through the airport doors, out into the warm air bath, where palm fronds dance in the hot jet fuel breeze, they wait for me:

Nyoman, Made, Ketut, Wayan, Kadek, Dewa, Ida Bagus, Kadek, Nyoman, Agung, Putu, Wayan, Gusti, Ketut, Made, Wayan, Ketut, Nengah, Gede, Agus, Komang, Ketut...

Leaning over barricades, signs dangling from long slim fingers, smiles wide and full of waiting, only I am not the one they are waiting for.

I am not Jane Griggson, not Bill Friend and family, nor The Olaff Group, not Kyoko Ryoshi, not Gunther Rolandson, not the St Marks College Group or the South Coast Retirees Football Team. I have no booking, no safe transfer to a comfortable hotel with blue pools that go on forever, with bikini girls on white banana lounges and pink cocktail umbrellas that never see rain. No hotel boy is picking me up, no driver in ceremonial sarong and headdress to make me feel like Anna in _The King and I_.

Their smiles are so welcoming and I read the names on their signs as if it could be me, as if I want it to be me, just to see their smile, just to catch a moment of, 'Is it you? Could it be you? Are you the one I am waiting for?'

But I can't prolong the pretending and as soon as I shake my head and pass, they return their eager smiles to their waiting pose.

I think it must be obvious that this is my first time, so I try to adopt a confident air and pretend to be looking for someone. A special friend perhaps, with his driver — they must be late. I make some business with my watch and mobile phone, texting my imaginary friend to come and rescue me as soon as possible; looking out into the distance as if doing so will conjure them up.

Past the inner rim of waiting drivers, other handsome brown-skinned men lean or squat, backs against pillars, lazy with the heat, smoking _kretek_ cigarettes, laughing, joking, waiting as if it is their art.

'Taxi, transport, transport, taxi' they call as I push my way through the pack.

I find a spot away from the crush, to gather my thoughts and make my plan, then I sit down on my suitcase and like everyone else, I wait.

2

I'd managed to get the last seat on the 'I Don't Like Mondays' morning flight to 'Schapelle's Bali'. That's what the airline check in girl called it as I handed over the ticket I'd bought only moments before at the bookings desk. She said that before Schapelle checking in was much more relaxed. After Schapelle, or as she corrected herself, after the 'Schapelle Show', everyone had become an obsessive compulsive; checking, rechecking, cling-wrapping their bags or running off to buy locks and stuffing any gaps in their luggage at the last minute with dirty underwear in a bid to ward off drug smugglers or tamperers.

'I had no idea how neurotic Australians could become,' she told me in a delightful country girl drawl that matched her cowgirl-style stewardess outfit.

'You wanna window seat? You gotta check out the desert on the way across, aaawsome!'

'Er, yes if possible,' I answered. 'I thought I'd be too late...'

'Yoo never know your luck! I can tell you now, all the Ozzies want aisle seats — weak bladders. They like to be close to the loo, especially on the way back!'

I asked if she thought I'd be better off going to Fiji, Hayman Island or the Cook Islands; because Bali's such a cliché isn't it, and now with all the drug business — Schapelle and those other poor kids, terrorism and bird flu...

'They didn't read the signs, did they? Bird flu? Eat a clove of garlic everyday. It'll kill anything. Even keep terrorists away. You got a lock on your suitcase?' I nodded.

'Sweeet. You'll be right. And what's wrong with clichés? Look at me! I'm a walking cliché! Who cares? I don't!'

She leaned in across her desk.

'Let me tell you a secret. It's the clichés that make us happy in this life, don't you think? We all want love and happiness, yes? And what a bloody cliché that is! Don't worry, Bali is the closest to paaradiize I've ever gotten, and beleeve me I've been to most of the paaradiize islands around here. But you gotta get away from the tooorist strip. Go to Ubood! It's not so hot up there. You can stay at the Ubood Palace where the royal family live. It's wiiild! Can you imagine any other royal family renting out rooms to tourists! But that's the Balinese for you. They are soooooo nice!'

Then she flashed me a knowing smile.

'You'll find out.'

She slapped my boarding pass on the counter, gave my suitcase a push and practically shouted,

'Gate 57 boaarding now! Next plleeze.'

3

Motorbikes and taxis honk past on the road in front, dropping passengers off, picking them up. Police in brown uniforms with grins as charming as the rest of them, whistle the drivers on, only no one seems to take much notice. Beyond the low sprawling buildings I have come from, planes rev up to the hilt and take off screaming into the sky. More planes thud and screech along the melting tarmac, bringing in the afternoon cargo of dollar fat tourists to fill the night spots in place of those now speeding towards a spectacular twilight.

And somewhere in the distance — the tinkling of bells and a whiff of temple incense.

Then through the heat shimmering crowd he steps, his hand outstretched.

'Good afternoon, I'm so sorry you have been waiting. Welcome to Bali!'

He takes my hand, his touch so gentle. Handsome of course, but not searingly so like the young men around me. Balding slightly, a little shorter than me. Late thirties, early forties, could be fifty. How would you know? He smiles his boyish smile and looks me straight in the eye.

'Let me guess where you are you going. Nusa Dua? Legian? Seminyak? Sanur?'

'I'm hoping to go to Ubud,' I reply. 'A friend was meant to pick me up but...' I let my lie trail off into the heat.

'I've heard it's cooler there and not so many tourists,' I continue. A smile takes over his whole face, ear to ear and chin to forehead.

'Uboood!' he grins, 'That's my town! I am born there. You have goood taste! Are you an artist? You look artistic. You must be! Oh, I can show you such beautiful places, many beautiful painting, carving, weaving, jewellery... do you like silver jewellery?'

'Yes I don't mind it...' I say. 'Do you know the Ubud Palace? A friend recommended I stay there...'

'Ya, ya, of course, I know it!' he says.

Then I remember, perhaps I am supposed to bargain for a price before agreeing to go with a driver.

'And how much will it be... to drive there? I'm sorry, I don't know your name...'

'Up to you, up to you, no worries, I am Ida Bagus... You can call me Bagus. It means good!' He laughs.

'I am very good... at everything!' We both laugh

'And you?'

'Marilyn,' I mumble softly, as I know what's coming.

'Marilyn! Like Marilyn Monroe!'

'Well yes, but not the young Marilyn, perhaps the older one.' I give my stock reply. We laugh again.

'But you are more beautiful.' He flashes his smile at me. I smile back, and whether I believe him or not, accept the compliment graciously. He picks up my bag and like a gentleman gestures ahead.

'Shall we go then?'

Why am I not suspicious, not on my guard, why am I just taking the first offer, not comparing prices, not checking my guide book, being more discerning? Why? His voice, so generous and slow, his soft hands, his big-smile kindness, his eyes that already see me.

He's just a driver for god's sake, who is going to take me to a hotel! And logically I justify; if he does rip me off, rob me blind or leave me in a ditch, at least I can say it couldn't have happened with a nicer person.

4

We drive out of the airport car park into a human sea. Waves of motorbikes surround us, riding us, surfing our wake, holding back, letting us through, then seizing the gap and darting ahead. They are the small quick fish. We are the big cod, the whales and sharks. Together we ride in one big wave towards green then red traffic lights. We slow together, take off together, overtake and fall back again, racing each other home.

Bagus's small, black four-wheel drive with tinted windows is somewhere between a cod and a shark. Its seats are covered in a scaly bumpy fabric. It's cold from the air conditioning just like the inside of a fish must be and a good luck charm dangles from the visor like a bright lure already swallowed.

Warehouses line the busy main road. Vacant land, mangrove swamps and stagnant waterways choked with plastic bags and bottles stretch away to the left and right. It's not the scenic tour, I ponder, rather the Balinese version of industrial suburbia that surrounds most major airports, only here there are people everywhere: working, walking, squatting in the shade, selling food at roadside stalls and riding, riding.

I stare out like a voyeur into the sea of vehicles beside us, fascinated by how much one person can carry on a single motorbike.

A farmer has what looks to be his whole rice harvest piled high on the back of his Yamaha. Builders carry long poles of timber and bamboo. Surfers carry surfboards, the pillion passenger holding them straight along each side, making their bike look like a Goggomobil. Office girls coming home from work drive daintily, students in uniform, three to a bike, driving home from school. Grandma in her lace blouse and ceremonial sarong, gracefully riding side-saddle, being ferried to the temple I presume. How calmly and serenely they ride. How beautiful these people are. Isn't anyone here ugly?

Through a wide junction with a huge statue of a warrior fighting off a serpent, along another busy road and further on, we are waved to a stop by men in black and white check sarongs, brandishing red traffic wands.

Bagus announces, 'Look, a ceremony procession, just for you. Do you want to take photo?' I nod and search for my camera. He pulls over and waits while I get out. I hate being such an obvious tourist but how can I pretend to be anything else?

Long lines of women, men and children in colourful ceremonial dress cross the road. The women, straight-backed and elegant, carry tall offering baskets of beautifully arranged fruit on their heads. They are accompanied by an orchestra of men and boys carrying gongs and cymbals beating out a fast emphatic rhythm. It takes quite a while for them to cross, the traffic is at a standstill but no one seems to mind. Then they disappear through ornate temple gates and are gone.

I get back in the car, breathless from my first real cultural experience. Bagus drives on, leaving the ceremony behind and I ask him,

'Is it a special day? Does this happen very often?'

Bagus laughs.

'Every day is special day in Bali! Always ceremony going on like this.'

'But what about people at work,' I ask. 'Surely they don't go?'

'Oh yes, everybody goes. They must go. This is Bali! Everybody does ceremony all the time! Next week we have biiiig ceremony, Galungan. Now everybody is preparing for it. And you? You do ceremony?' he asks.

'Mm, not really.' I answer. 'We have Christmas, and birthdays I suppose. When we are born and when we die. Oh, and when we get married. But not as colourful as that, much more sombre and boring.'

Bagus wants to know more.

'Why are you travelling alone? Where is your husband? Where are your children?'

I gaze back into the scenery. I don't really want to answer these questions right now. Conveniently a small boy leading a flock of ducks crosses the road in front of us.

'Oh look,' I exclaim, leaning out the window to get more shots.

'Oh, Bagus, isn't that gorgeous!'

'Gorgeous? What does that mean Marilyn?' he asks.

'Lovely, nice, yummy!' I reply enthusiastically.

'Yummy?' he queries.

'Yes, yummy, like something delicious.'

'Delicious? You want to eat _bebek_ Marilyn?'

'Bebek?' I ask.

'Bebek is duck, Marilyn. I can make delicious smoked duck for you if you want.'

'Oh,' I laugh, 'Yes, that would be nice. But I mean it looks delicious!'

'Oh. I see. But delicious is not look. It's taste Marilyn — _enak_.'

'Enaa?' I repeat.

'Enak is what you say after you eat my smoked duck,' he jokes.

'Oooh. So enak is not about a thing, only a food yes? But can you have an enak person?' I tease.

'Person is not enak Marilyn, unless you are going to eat them! And then still not enak!'

By now we are both laughing like children at the confusion we have created.

'Enaaah!' I practice.

'Enak,' Bagus corrects me.

'Enak, enak,' I repeat.

'Ya _bagus_ ,' Bagus praises. 'You got it!'

5

The tree-lined road we travel along has galleries and wood furniture showrooms on either side displaying all the outdoor poolside settings you see on decks and balconies across my city. I'm busy wondering how much they cost if you buy them here and ship them back. Not that I need poolside furniture, I don't even have a swimming pool. I am just distracting myself from Bagus's question.

It's not that I don't want to talk about my family. I'm already well prepared. I rehearsed my answer on the plane, with the man sitting next to me in 15b. Thankfully he wasn't in the mood to talk. But if he had been and had started to probe, as fellow travellers casually do, with innocent questions like where are you going, where are you staying, how long will you be there and so on, this is what I would have answered:

'Look if you don't mind, I don't want to analyse why I got out of bed today and instead of going to work, packed a suitcase and ended up on a plane to an island I have always wanted to go to since the kids were little, but we never got round to it and then our marriage started to break up and that took about ten years so there was no way we were all going while we were in and out of marriage counselling, when we should've just spent the money on a trip to Bali and then parted ways, 'cos god knows that marriage counsellor and all the others who made so much money giving us bad advice should've just been honest in the first place, and said look, there's no hope, you are both too bloody strong-minded so let me save you thousands of dollars — why don't you just go on a holiday and call it a day!

Well now I am going on that holiday even though it may be twenty years later and the kids are grown and the ex and I are on good terms and gone is all the drama of those years of trying to find yourself in a marriage that you simply got lost in, after all the ideals you had about equality and sharing roles and not doing it like our parents but in the end being ground down by tiredness and the daily grind of caring for two small beings with more energy than nuclear-powered trains on a collision course towards one another!

And so we tried to find our outlines again, like two cartoon characters whose ink had faded, but this time we weren't on the same page, we weren't searching for ourselves in one another as you do when you first fall in love; this time we sought relief from what we had come to represent, and we tried to escape into dreams and fantasy and longing for something else that would take us out of our habitual boredom and make us feel alive again.

And when one of us found it, the other felt betrayed and suffered like a wounded animal not realising that this suffering could also be our liberation, and instead clung to the drama as if it were life, as if to let go of it must surely be death. And so we carried on like this for many years until one day we woke up, cut our losses and moved on.'

I had thought this would surely keep the man sitting next to me from asking any more questions. But in case there was an awkward silence, I would continue on:

And so alone we each discovered freedom again, freedom to sleep in a big bed without anyone dragging the doona off in the cold of the night, freedom to wake up in the morning and think only of one instead of two, three, four people's needs before your own, freedom to find out if there really was something out there you had been missing out on.

So you did the rounds of parties and dating and surreptitious chat rooms even though you didn't have the energy for it any more and you longed for the comfort of collapsing back into the arms of the only person in the world who knew you so well, and sometimes you did, just to taste again the thing you had lost, but each time it threw you back into the grief and you pined for your family — your cosy little family with all its frustrations and irritations, you wanted it back, but there was no going back, only forward into the new, but did you want a new person to replace the old, to start the whole thing again with somebody else, and what about the kids, what about them?

They had travelled so patiently from house to house, their little backpacks on their backs, their two houses, two beds, two wardrobes, two sets of toys, two pets, two lots of rules, two routines. Somehow you never could imagine inviting another man into the family you cherished so dearly, so you kept your new friends at arm's length, never inviting them home, because how could you see yourself as an independent sexual being when you are still a mother, how could you have a sexual relationship with someone who wasn't your husband even though he wasn't your husband any more, and even to think sexual thoughts as you cooked dinner for the kids, made you feel like some kind of harlot.

And so you were almost relieved when the new friend said they would be transferred out of town, or they had discovered they were gay or had decided to take up the robes and become a Buddhist monk. And your ex became your friend again and your children gave you as many cuddles and kisses as you needed until puberty took them away again.

And then you really felt alone and did another round of internet chat because by now everyone was doing it, now it was respectable to be offering yourself to complete strangers that you spent hours with in long conversations, men you never ever met but who you became more intimate with than you had with any human being in your entire life and the fact they were on the other side of the world didn't matter; soldiers in wars and ex cops working night shift for the US post office and all the types you had always fantasised about, you found you could access them in virtual space and you felt fed and nurtured by instant messenger until after months and months of daily conversations, one day they would disappear without a trace and you would wonder, did they die, have a terrible accident or did they just move on?

So you became a workaholic, joining committees and working parties and working late into the night and finally you understood why workaholics love to be busy all the time because they don't have to think about what's missing in their lives and on the weekends they are always too tired from the week at work... So now you have an excuse to stay in and relish your solitude even though it's tinged with loneliness when the drunken screams and calls from Saturday night pub-goers passing the front door remind you that someone out there is still having fun.

And so you slip further and further into the grey zone. You start to disappear into all shades of grey, like a grey in-between area or a grey monochrome video where everything is the same day after day, where nothing ever changes because colour hasn't been invented yet. And you muse that if this is midlife crisis, you wish it was a little more dramatic. Not as dramatic as the break-up years, you add, but these days of sameness that go on and on and close you in so you feel like you live in a box, your house is a box, your car is a box as you travel down rectangular roads to get to the big box building you work in where your desk is a box and your computer the box portal you spend all your day in, until you drive to the big fat box supermarket to shop for dinner and home again to fall into the box of your bed where you dream your childhood dreams of foxes in soxes in boxes...'

By then I realised I'd been monopolising the conversation and turned to the man sitting next to me and said,

'And what about you?'

He didn't answer because he was already fast asleep.

6

We sit in traffic behind an old-fashioned truck with timber sides, carrying piles of rock. The labourers, all women, perched on top of the pile, wear faded batik sarongs and dusty T-shirts, old towels and bits of fabric draped over their heads, shielding their eyes from the sun, holding onto the timber sides, laughing and talking.

A young boy selling newspapers comes to the car window tempting me to buy the news of the day, only his English language newspapers are already out of date. Another boy weaves in and out of the cars and trucks, selling beach balls and funny noses. Who will buy them, I wonder? Bagus waves them away and asks me again why I am travelling alone. It doesn't seem to bother him that my concentration is all over the place. I guess he is used to Aussie refugees escaping their nine to five lives, arriving on the shores of his island unable to put a coherent sentence together. But somehow I don't feel my rehearsed answer is appropriate for him, so once more I lie.

'My husband is working. My children are studying. I am here working on a book.'

'Oh, you are a writer! Bali is a good place to write — lots of inspiration. Do you have any books I can read?'

'No, no,' I laugh, 'not yet, but soon maybe...'

How can I tell him I am not a real writer, just a scribbler, although it's not a complete fabrication. Anyone following me around in my daily life would think I am either a writer or just strange, or both, the way I carry on — vague or preoccupied, never quite in the conversation, answering in monosyllables or half-hearted grunts. Always anxious to get away, to capture the moment I've just experienced and take it back to my writer's lair, where I can turn it over this way and that, savouring the detail and stashing it in my meat safe to use at a later date.

I have notebooks of all sizes hidden in as many places as possible to catch the thoughts that tumble through my brain at any time of the day — in my purse, in the car, by my bed, in the toilet, in my desk at work. I carry notebooks with me wherever I go so I can get them out whenever I am stuck in time; in train stations, in doctors' waiting rooms, traffic jams, in the queue at the bank. I am dying to pull my notepad out now and jot down impressions but I don't want to be impolite and even though I would never show what I write to someone else in a million years, I do confess that like every man and his dog, I have the dream of one day being published, of walking into a book store and seeing my book with my name on the cover on the new releases stand — and so right now telling a complete stranger for the first time in my life, that I am working on a book, makes me think that if I can just act 'as if,' maybe one day I will take myself seriously enough to actually get my work out there and find out if I really am wasting my time, or if I should just give up now and take up another hobby that gives some instant satisfaction like cake decorating or table tennis, instead of this slow daily torture of working towards a goal I don't know is a reality or an illusion.

'Is your husband a writer?' Bagus asks.

'No, no,' I scoff, as I catch an image of Bruce dressed in his accountant's suit carrying his briefcase with nothing but his lunch inside. But he deserves an upgrade too, so I reply,

'He is an engineer.'

'Ah... he is clever... like you. You have a clever family. Everybody studying and working hard.'

Then he asks, 'Your husband doesn't mind you going away by yourself?'

'No, no, he goes away a lot too, for work.'

'Aah, is that why you look sad? I think he goes away too much!'

What did he say? Did he say I look sad?

'Maybe I'm just tired,' I give a half-hearted laugh.

'Looks like something sad happened to you,' Bagus says. 'It's okay. We all have something. Don't worry. We'll look after you. In Bali you can't stay sad for long!'

I stare out at the passing yards of stone Buddhas, Greek goddesses, life-size elephants and tigers, all lined up in rows ready to march like armies out into the world. Bagus is right. I was sad once. Long enough for the wind to change a few times. But I've given up sadness, only if it's not obvious, I'll have to practise smiling more, to try to turn the down lines to up lines — there has to be a natural way to reverse the look that gets left on your face after life has had its way with you. I wonder if by regularly changing your thoughts, you can permanently change a sad look to a smiling face, a disappointed look to an enthusiastic one or a pained look to an expression of bliss.

Next to us a family travels, four on one motorbike, the little one standing between his father's legs, hands clasping the steering column, the daughter sandwiched between her mother and father on the pillion; arms around each other's waists, they look so secure and serene in their family unit.

Serenity, I think. That's the look I want.

I wonder if I can get it in five days?

7

'So your husband is looking after your children?' Bagus asks, as the back projection of stone sculptures continues on both sides of the road. It feels like we are in a drive-in temple, a kind of Noah's ark of stone and wood. Every animal and deity is represented, every religion catered for, but Buddhas seem to be the most popular line.

'Yes, of course,' I answer, 'but my kids are big enough to look after themselves now.'

I don't like lying so much but how can I tell Bagus the truth?

How can I tell him I woke at dawn this morning with the words in my throat: I HAVE TO GET AWAY, and with the slow methodical focus of a sleepwalker, packed a suitcase, left a note for the kids and trundled out the front door.

I'm still not sure how I ended up on a plane to Bali, but when I got to the park at the end of my street and climbed the man-made hill, looking out over the man-made wetlands and saw the big plane car park stretching out a suburb step away, tails proudly lined up in rows blazing their countries' emblems to the sky...

... and when I checked my purse and found my passport still there from a month before when I needed it for ID... and my emergency credit card still nestled behind my other overdrawn bits of shiny plastic...

... and when I answered the questions; Could I? Would I? Dare I? — with a resounding affirmative...

... my suitcase and I were already rolling down the hill towards the tarmac pond where big pelican planes, beaks and bellies filled with people and cargo, taxied into position and took off on their diagonals; upwards, forever upwards, until they turned and disappeared into the map of the world.

o-o-o

As I looked down from the plane window at the bald green hill in the park where I had been a couple of hours before, I knew I wasn't sleepwalking. It was as if the part of me that had reached its no go limit had hypnotised the rest of me, so like a thief it could steal the one thing I could never claim as mine — a holiday in paradise.

Our plane banked and turned inland across the grey scrub of the national park and I could just make out the shape of my little holiday shack nestled on the edge of the ridge.

'The kids think I am staying with you and my boss thinks I'm in Melbourne visiting my sick mother,' I whispered to the shack. 'So let this be our secret. Next visit is yours — I promise.'

I stayed glued to the tiny window as meals and drinks rolled up and down the aisle-ways and passengers settled themselves into travelling mode; with books, headphones, games and the new-release movie that if you were in luck was not another tired old sitcom. And I watched fascinated, as the broccoli hills beneath us morphed into flat paddocks and flat paddocks flattened into red desert, and then something more surprising came into view. A vast moonscape of ridges and lines of rock formation stretched and streamed into the distance, like sand ripples on a giant red earth beach. And in between, huge lakes and salt pans spread their shapes across the land.

'There is so much water in the desert,' I wanted to alert all the other passengers, as I stood in the queue for the loo. 'This ancient land is so ancient!' I wanted to shout.

But everyone was just reading or sleeping or laughing out loud at a crass American comedy, pretending they were still in their living room at home and not really hurtling through the sky thousands of metres above a landscape they will most likely never see or set foot in, that makes up the vast part of the country they call their own. The cheap disposable camera I'd bought in duty free, with guidebook and phrasebook thrown in, was already half full as I'd snapped away at the giant sand paintings below — creatures and figures and paper-cut patterns, with no roads in sight.

In front of me in the queue, a couple of tanned, aging yoga ladies, pink and purple pashminas slung around their fit yoga shoulders, talked loudly to a young well-dressed woman who seemed to be the only Australian on the plane not decked out head to toe in Billabong surf wear.

The more vocal member of the pair, adjusting her bright purple glasses on a chain around her neck, gave forth.

'Oh it's not like it used to be. Noooo, this will be our last trip. Its too commercial now. Bali has sold her soul. I remember when there were only dirt roads and no electricity and hardly any cars. Oooh, those where the days — weren't they Cheryl?'

Cheryl added wisely, 'Oh yes, Brenda is right. You should have seen it then.'

Brenda continued on. 'Yes, Bali is ruined now. Her purity is lost I'm afraid. We were going to open our healing centre there, but now we have to look somewhere else.' She suddenly got an idea.

'Maybe the desert. What do you think Cheryl? The air is dry, great for the skin. We can come up with some amaaaz-ing mud pack treatments using the desert earth. Hey, that's a good name for our centre, "Desert Earth". Quick write it down Cheryl.'

Cheryl obediently took out a rice paper hand-bound notebook and scribbled.

'With permission from the local Indigenous, capital "I", landowners of course. We really wanted to do it in Bali but it's too risky now. Since the Sari Club, who knows when there'll be another one. Yeeees, her day is over I'm afraid. She's had a good run. A good thirty years — all the time I've been coming here. A lot of people got rich but I don't know if they can hang onto it now. Maybe they can. There's been a good recovery. They're just getting back to normal now and how long has that taken? Three years?'

'Three years nearly to the day,' Cheryl added with a click of her tongue. Brenda threw her pashmina across her shoulder with a flourish and flicked the person standing behind her in the eye.

'Sorry grandad,' she said to the man not much older than her, as she patted him on the head.

'Once you could have gone there and had a true spiritual experience but not now. But it's all karma, isn't it Cheryl?' Cheryl nodded.

'No true, that's what they believe. The bombings happened in Kuta because people are so busy making money they don't have time to pray and do ceremony. They don't make their own offerings anymore. They buy the offerings in the market! And the offerings they used to place on the street, down low, to keep the bad spirits happy, they don't do any more because it's too busy with all those boofhead Ozzie crowds walking past. I mean if you want to go on holidays to meet Ozzstralians why not stay in Ozztralia! Ask Cheryl! It's true isn't it Shez?'

Cheryl nodded automatically.

'That's the chink. That's how the demons and the drugs can get in.' She made a slithering snake like movement with her hand towards the young woman.

'Kuta has lost its protection, that's all. And maybe there's some plusses. Get all that dependence off tourism and Bali can go back to a more simple way of life, the way it was before, when we first came here, eh Shez? Oh look, the loo is free.'

Cheryl deferred to Brenda. Brenda insisted Cheryl go.

'No, no, you go first dear. Your bladder is far worse than mine.'

Cheryl obeyed gratefully. Brenda turned all her attention on the young woman.

'Soooo, are you on holiday in Bali for long dear?'

The young woman replied, 'No, not holidaying — working. I'm a lawyer.'

'Oooh! Which one are you defending? Schapelle, the Bali Nine... that new girl?'

The young woman answered, 'I'm sorry, I'm afraid that information is confidential.'

Cheryl came out of the loo.

'Cheryl, guess what! This young lady is defending one of those poor drug mules.'

Cheryl raised her eyebrows and looked impressed.

'Which one did you say it was?' Brenda probed.

The young woman ignored the question and motioned for Brenda to go next.

'No, no, you go dear, you go. My bladder can take anything and besides it's good for me to stand for a while. You know, DVT — Deep Vein Thrombosis.'

The young woman disappeared into the toilet.

'They should ban all young people from coming to Bali,' Brenda hissed to Cheryl.

'That would solve the problem. The druggies and the lawyers. So rude!'

8

Leaving behind the fume-laden traffic, the big warehouses and yards of statues and garden plants, Bagus and I travel on a narrower road through bright green rice paddies with more waddling ducks and rice drying in the sun on blue tarpaulins. There is little traffic now, only a few motorbikes and cars and no room for overtaking.

Across a big river and further on, we enter a deep bend, following a winding road down into an open forest of broad-leafed trees, to a small bridge and up the other side. I sit up straight, eyes alert, for it feels like we have crossed an invisible line — as if, I imagine, we are entering a magical, mystical kingdom. Bagus senses my excitement.

'I knew you would like my town,' he says proudly.

Soon its narrow streets of artisan shopfronts, cute cafés and chic restaurants are upon us. I wind my window down to get a closer look. Shop keepers and artists sit out in front of their shops; talking, joking, smiling at tourists stumbling past, guidebooks open, searching for an authentic artefact to take home and hang on their apartment walls.

'This is famous Monkey Forest Road,' Bagus announces as we turn into another road and follow the bend around.

'And that is Monkey Forest.' He points towards a leafy gateway.

'But you have to be careful. The monkeys will steal anything. They especially like hand-phones.'

We drive up the length of the one way street as it gets busier by the metre; vans beeping and motorbikes darting, locals and tourists milling around the market at the corner junction.

'That is Ubud Market. You can buy anything you want there. And that is the Ubud Palace.'

He points across the street. A policeman waves and whistles us through the intersection. We pull into the street opposite, and park next to a long line of vans and four-wheel drives, under the shade of some tall, ancient-looking trees.

o-o-o

When I step out of the car I feel like I have arrived in a kind of heaven. The air around us is filled with the most glorious music I have ever heard. It's coming from a large open-sided building in front of us where a group of Balinese women are practising _gamelan_ , their small hammers striking the metal bars of their instruments in unison and the deep tones of the gongs ringing out the low under-rhythm. Kids play and run about in the body of the hall. Men in sarongs and the characteristic headdress, like a bandana tied around their foreheads, are talking and laughing. On the corner, drivers sit leaning against each other, asking every passing tourist if they want transport and not seeming to bother when they say no, for I guess sooner or later one will say yes.

Bagus comes around the side of the car with my bag.

'So, here we are,' he says, gesturing around us. 'What do you think? It's very central. Everything you need — restaurants, shopping. And if you want to do any trips you can call me. Here is my card. We can go maaany places — Kintamani, Tanah Lot — anywhere you want to go, I am haaappy to take you.'

I put his card in my purse. I feel a little sorry to be leaving Bagus. He is my oldest friend here. I've known him for under an hour.

'You have a booking?' he asks.

'No... I just thought... do you think it will be alright?'

'Let's go and see,' Bagus answers. 'You might be lucky.'

9

The outer courtyard of the palace is busy with people and activity. Anyone, it seems, can come in and wander about. At one end tall steps lead to carved temple doors. Another gamelan orchestra of boys is practicing in a pavilion to the right, their young faces full of concentration and confidence as they follow their instructor's movements. Bagus leads me through a carved gateway to the side, up worn steps, through the gates and down again into a manicured garden where several rooms are dotted about, decorated with gold wood-carving so ornate I do believe I am in a royal palace. On a high platform in the centre several men of differing ages dressed in white jackets, with gold-edged sarongs and white headdresses, are seated cross-legged, having what looks to be a very important meeting. A party of Japanese tourists take snapshots of each other standing next to sculpted frogs with water streaming from their mouths and private parts. We walk in awe and reverence past the elaborate quarters of the royal family, but I don't see a reception desk anywhere. Bagus goes to find a staff member and comes back with the news,

'Sorry Marilyn, they are booked out. They say maybe in three days they will have a room.'

'Oh... well okay, I... there must be somewhere else...' I reassure myself.

Suddenly it all seems too difficult, this place too busy and garish, this land too strange. I head for the exit. Bagus follows with my suitcase.

Outside on the street I'm not sure what to do. The heat suddenly hits me. I feel like I will faint. I also feel foolish. What was I thinking? What kind of mother am I? What kind of friend? What kind of person jumps on a plane to another country without telling anyone?

I turn to Bagus.

'Bagus, perhaps you can you recommend another... hot... ho...'

My tears beat me to it. They start to splatter down my cheeks, then pour, then run, then torrent. There is no way to stop them.

Bagus takes my arm and leads me back to the car. He stows my bag again. We get back in our seats and he patiently waits.

'I... I'm... sorry...' I blubber. 'I... never... do... this. I haven't... done this for years... don't know... what...'

'It's okay, don't worry,' Bagus reassures me.

'I'm... usually... str... str... str... strong... I don't... like... to... be... like this.'

'It's okay... don't worry, no problem...' His gentle voice calms me.

Bagus pulls out a large clean white handkerchief from his pocket and offers it to me. I start to laugh in between blubbers.

'So... B... B... Balinese men ca... caa...rry hand...kerchiefs too!'

'Yes of course,' Bagus replies.

'You can come to stay at my house, with my family.' Bagus offers. 'We have a room. Sometimes we do homestay. It's very nice. It's simple, but I think you'll like it.'

I try to speak,

'No, really... I can't... you mustn't... I'll... be... al...'

He starts the car and reverses into the road. We drive off into the afternoon haze. Smoke from small gutter fires fills the air.

Why don't I feel embarrassed to have fallen in a heap in front of a man I hardly know, in an alien culture I have just portalled into like a time traveller from Dr Who? Am I really so tired from my work-life treadmill? Has the iron band of will that has been getting me through each day suddenly loosened? Or is it the sheer relief that for the first time in many years someone is looking after me?

I put my head out the window and inhale the whiff of long-lost autumn days. The colours around me blur into a watery wash, the smoky breeze envelopes me and my tears fly away on the wind.

10

The entrance to Bagus's home stands tall in the compound wall like all the other front doors in the street. We walk up the steps through the carved wooden doors then down again into the compound as we did at the Palace; to keep the bad spirits out, Bagus had informed me.

Its layout, while on a smaller and more utilitarian scale, is similar to the palace. Rooms with tiled platforms like verandahs lie to the left and right and in the centre is a thatch-roofed platform with a high bed and ancient television set. There is no real garden, only a few small trees and flowering bushes with some scrawny chickens strutting about, pecking in the dirt. Bagus shoos them away as he barks his words into the air.

A thin woman, tired beauty falling from her face, emerges from the kitchen. Three young children follow. The youngest, a girl, peeks out from behind her mother's sarong.

Nearby, a young woman sits plaiting light green palm fronds. A girl about two years old plays at her feet. On the tiled platform in the middle, an old man sits, bare-chested, cross-legged, sarong tucked around his legs, flicking a palm frond in the air. A very thin old woman lying on the high bed raises her head slowly to have a look, smiles, then lowers it again. A bright-eyed older girl of indeterminate age hangs back in the shadows, her eyes busy with excitement, and in the background another woman, older and plumper than the others, dressed like the women in the ceremony we'd seen, moves slowly about with a tray, incense smoke trailing, placing what must be small offerings in high places.

'Are all these people your family?' I whisper to Bagus.

'Yes this is my family,' he answers proudly. 'My father, my mother, my aunt, my sister, my cousin's wife, their daughter, my wife, my kids,' he says, motioning to each one in turn.

'Too many names to remember so I won't tell them all,' he laughs, 'but this is my wife Putu.'

The woman near the kitchen comes toward me offering her hand and a smile. The kids follow behind.

'Welcome to our home,' she says. ' _Dari mana_? Where you come from?'

'Sydney,' I answer.

'Oh, not so far.'

She smiles again as the kids shuffle and fidget around her.

Bagus growls a command to the young woman to take my bag and points further into the compound. I wonder where all his charm and kindness has gone, but it returns as he asks if I would like a drink and invites me to sit down. I accept and sit on the edge of the middle platform, near the old man in the shade. He grins at me then returns his concentration to his slow flicking.

Putu goes to the kitchen with the oldest boy who looks about nine years old. He comes back with a glass of water and hands it to me. Bagus notices me looking at it warily.

'It's alright,' he laughs. 'It's boiled. We drink boiled water too.'

I smile and nod and finally drink, thinking everyone is watching me but they have all gone back to whatever they were doing.

A loud revving breaks the quiet. A young man in jeans and T-shirt rides a motorbike down the thin wheel ramp in the middle of the entrance steps.

'My nephew Nyoman, from Singaraja,' Bagus announces. 'He lives with us too, while he is studying for his tourism diploma in Denpasar. Anything you want to know about Bali, you can ask him in any language: Japanese, French, Dutch, German and Aussie. And if you need to go anywhere, like supermarket or shops, he can take you on his bike.'

'No worries, mate,' Nyoman grins, as he takes his helmet off, bows his head charmingly and disappears into the compound.

The young woman returns and goes back to her task. She smiles politely and watches me with guarded eyes.

Bagus talks to Putu near the kitchen door. It all seems very serious but then he says something and they laugh together, sharing the intimacy of a private joke. The kids join in, picking up on the energy. He lifts the youngest girl onto his shoulders and dips her down again. She squeals with laughter. Then they all want a go.

'No, no,' he pleads, extricating himself. ' _Nanti_! _Nanti_!'

'Sorry Marilyn,' he laughs as he comes towards me. 'I'll show you to your room now.'

I nod goodbye. They all smile politely except for the little ones who follow me with their eyes until I am out of sight.

o-o-o

We walk through the living area past a grouping of shrines behind a closed gate, through another grand mossy gateway along a paved path. Pink lilies leap from a central pond with water features, small bridges and walkways that lead in different directions to three or four secluded buildings with thatched roofs.

'Bagus! This is beautiful!' I murmur.

It looks like a picture from a travel agent's magazine but as we step closer I start to notice signs of dilapidation. Wood planks are rotting on the approach to most of the rooms, and, as we pass I see that the downstairs of the buildings are bare shells. Piles of rock and gravel nearby are grown over with moss and weeds as if one day the workers had walked off the job and never come back.

'Was going to be beautiful,' Bagus mutters.

'What happened?' I ask.

'The dream turned out to be just a dream,' he replies, a dull resignation in his tone.

Bagus tells me how after years of watching his friends get rich, selling off their rice paddies to developers and foreigners, he thought he would give it a try. Not wanting to sell out the land from under his family like many did, he had a vision to build a spa resort. He borrowed a lot of money from the bank and started to build. Then came the bomb at the Sari Club — and no tourists for a year. He couldn't afford to finish. Now he works just to pay off the debt.

'I discovered I'm not good at everything after all,' he says, making light of his folly.

'But we did finish one room.'

We arrive at a traditional thatch-roofed building surrounded by palms and flowering frangipani looking onto the central pond. Through the open doors of the ground floor bathroom, I glimpse a modern architectural study in cream sandstone with a private open-air spa and a pebble shower, looking out onto a garden and view beyond. I follow Bagus up the narrow wooden stairs to a balcony with a huge carved daybed, then through even more intricately carved doors into a spacious bedroom with a giant four-poster bed. Mosquito netting falls around it to the floor. I feel like I have arrived in the Princess Bride's bridal suite. My suitcase stands beside the bed proudly as if to say,

'See! I knew we'd end up somewhere good!'

'Oh Bagus,' I murmur. 'This is paradise! How much is it? It must be expensive to stay here.'

'No charge!' he says. 'You are my guest.'

'No, no, Bagus, I insist! I must pay you!'

'Please,' he says sternly, 'we won't discuss money now.'

I obey and walk out onto an enclosed balcony at the far end of the room where the rice paddy view is dissolving into a liquid twilight. I fall into a carved chair and stare out at the vanishing light.

'This is perfect, Bagus,' I mutter. Bagus smiles and takes the other chair. Together we watch the day end as silence sits between us like a friend.

Finally Bagus speaks.

'You must be very tired. Putu will bring you some food and then you must sleep. It's too much to wake up in one country and go to sleep at night in another. Tomorrow we can make a program. If I am not busy I can drive you wherever you want to go. And there are some mosquito coils if you need them.'

He leaves quietly. I barely notice he's gone. I sit for a long time letting the darkness creep into me, until mosquitoes force me to retreat.

11

I wake into a darkness so full of sound that for a moment I don't know where I am. Then I remember what I have done. It's an old habit. I used to do it as a child. Run into our vast rambling garden, choose a tree, scale it quickly then sit comfortably swaying in its branches while below me everyone called my name. Or stay out all day in the bush, arriving home just as dark was falling across the landscape and a search party was being mobilised. Or when I got my first car, taking off for two weeks, leaving a map and note on the kitchen table: 'If I'm not back by such and such a date, here is where you might find me.'

But this is a little different, I am out of the country, nobody  knows where I am. Well that's not exactly true. The immigration departments of two countries know, and you could bet that if anything does happen to me, I might even become a celebrity! I'm not hoping for that, although I must admit, I did mentally prepare a speech as I picked up my bag and imagined the spot where Schapelle was busted with her ill-fated boogie board weighed down with a stash of weed.

I had envisaged a whole security wall of police and sniffer dogs would greet us, not such beautiful bright-eyed boys and girls who went about their duties with such languid ease. Their graceful movements were in sharp contrast to the bag-toting raggedy bunch of crumpled, pink skinned, overweight, underdressed, over made up, pierced and tattooed Aussies arriving just like me for a guilt free holiday. Young women, surfers, grannies, mums, hen's parties, retired couples, family groups, hippies, yoga fanatics, expats, lawyers, footballers, wide-eyed backpackers, a couple of business people and a few Indonesians returning home, wearing their western sophistication far more elegantly than us.

As we waited in the long queue I had practised trying not to look guilty. There must be cameras trained on us, I thought, although in these traditional-style ceilings, you couldn't see where they could possibly be. I hoped they were not profiling me, picking me out because of the way I was fidgeting and playing nervously with a strand of my hair. But I decided if they did drag me in for questioning, I would explain as best I could by saying:

'Yes, I do admit I look guilty but it's only because when I was a child my father convinced me he always knew when I was lying, even when I wasn't, telling me he had spies following me everywhere just to make sure, so that now, in every conversation I have with anyone who starts to look me straight in the eye, I twist and fidget and begin to believe that I must be lying even though I'm not — to the extreme where I will start to convince them that I am, even when they tell me, 'It's okay, you may go now.'

In fact my father is the man I blamed for thinking my whole life was a lie, until I read recently that most people feel deep down they are a fraud in some way or other, and spend their lives trying to convince us all otherwise. 'This could explain a lot of things,' I diverged, 'like world wars and holocausts and the general mess we are all in...'

Then realising I was getting off the track I remembered to add, 'And while I am here I just want to say I am very sorry for any mistakes we Australians make in your country because really most of us are nice warm generous open people who would give the shirt off our back to help another human being even though we say stupid things from time to time and haven't really got a clue about other cultures and we live in a bit of an unreal bubble and to look at us you might think our behaviour is uncouth and our outlook limited... but I can guarantee if you knocked on our door in the middle of the night and you had nowhere to go we would invite you in and give you a bed and a meal and a nice hot cup of tea with milk and sugar and we would look after you until you were on your feet again...'

I'm glad I didn't have to give my speech and managed to slip through unnoticed waving my herbal tea under the customs official's nose without response. And he didn't bat an eyelid when I volunteered the purpose of my trip:

'All I want are some moments to myself, just me, that's all. No inevitable routine to come home to, no meals to cook, TV soaps to watch, questions to answer about what I did that day because what I did that day has been so the same as every other day for as long as I can remember and I just can't face that question anymore!'

o-o-o

Out in the night the wild animal symphony continues. Crickets and cicadas drum and hum. Frogs bleat like lambs. The hollow bark of a distant dog repeats its line for six beats, pauses for eight, then begins again. Roosters and night birds add their mournful crows and cries, calling out to their lost mates:

'Where are you? Where are you? Answer me my darling! Do not stay lost to me forever! At least let me hear your song!' Nearby a small animal chirrups away, its call like the sound of a drip of water played backwards.

I lie back in the pillows too tired to think, yet wide awake to the chorus that insists I share its early morning anxiety.

'Time is short!' they seem to say.

'What makes you think you have your whole life! Hurry! You'd better hurry! Before it's too late!' they crow.

And I want to answer, 'What if I don't want to do anything. What if I don't want to be great at anything. What if I never want to love again. What if I don't want to help the planet. What if I just want to look after myself, and be left in peace to potter about in a little bit of garden?'

o-o-o

As the first shades of light creep into the sky the cacophony abates, as if all the crying animals, comforted by the bright familiarity of daylight, realise they are saved from eternal darkness for another round. Now the sun warms their feathers and fur; people start to move about as they usually do. Everything the same, thank goodness. The same 'same' that I am trying to escape from. Escaping from my same into someone else's same. Would the Balinese be as fascinated by my everyday behaviours as I seem to be by theirs, I wonder?

There is a sarong waiting for me at the end of the bed. I wrap it around me and step out onto the balcony. I make some tea from the thermos Putu left when she brought my dinner.

Swallows dart low across the rice paddies, crisscrossing back and forth, chasing insects on air currents. A man across the way is busy near a tree. What is he doing I wonder. Is he going to chop it down? Then I see him reaching up and collecting red hibiscus flowers, filling his basket with them.

What kind of country is this, I wonder, where men go out in the morning to hunt flowers!

12

I dress for my morning walk and finding a path to a gate at the rear of the compound, I follow a dirt road up a rise into the rice fields. It's already busy with one or two motorbikes coming towards town, barefoot farmers with leathery skin, heading out to the paddies and school children in cute uniforms on their way to school.

As I pass, each person speaks to me a soft morning greeting.

'Paahggeeeee.'

At first I reply with good morning but then I get the courage to imitate the musical rise and fall of their word.

'Paaaahgggeeee,' I answer and the smile I get in response is worth the effort. I recall the clipped, self-conscious good morning greetings I often get on my early walks at home from people surprised to be spoken to. The sound of paaahgeee makes me feel warm inside and I want to say it over and over again.

I drop down into a hollow and follow a path that winds into a steep leafy gorge. I can hear laughter and chattering. There is a crisscross of tracks along the walls of the gorge to the river below. Through the foliage comes the sound of clothes slapping on rocks. Peering through the leaves I see a group of naked men sitting waist deep in the water. Further upstream a group of women and small children are lathering themselves with white soapy suds.

I follow the path in the other direction not wishing to intrude. Ahead of me I see Putu and some women deep in conversation. I wave. Putu comes towards me carrying a large basket of washing on her head.

'Laundry, Maraleen? You got any laundry?'

'No thanks Putu, just going for a walk.'

'Oh _jalan-jalan_ , bagus, that's why you have nice figure.'

She pats me on the bottom.

'You always do washing in the river?' I ask. 'You don't have a washing machine?

'Yaaaa... I want wash machine but Bagus says it will make me lazy!'

'You should make him do the washing every day and then see what he thinks!' I reply.

Putu laughs and laughs at this suggestion. The idea of Bagus at the river washing makes tears roll down her cheeks.

'Ah you are very funny Maraleen. Ah aha... you want to come for _mandi_?'

'Mandi?' I reply.

'Mandi is bath, Maraleen, you want mandi, Balinese way?'

'No thanks, Putu. I think I'll go back for breakfast,' I answer.

'Okay. You tell Wayan in the kitchen what you want. She will bring it. Follow this path straight up and you get home short way.'

'Thanks Putu.'

'Yaaa, see you Maraleen.' She starts to make her way down the path. Then she turns and calls,

'Oh Maraleen.' She smiles at me.

'Yes,' I reply.

' _Hati-hati_ ,' she says.

'Okay, Putu, thank you,' I call back.

I had read in my guide book on the plane hati-hati means 'be careful', and I noticed it on road signs on our drive to Ubud. I wonder what she means. It all feels so safe here. And yet as I walk back along the path, I catch a hint of something else lurking in the green, as if the forest is full of an energy I know I wouldn't want to tangle with on a dark night. I hurry back up the path using hunger as my excuse for haste.

o-o-o

Wayan, the young woman who took my bags yesterday, brings my breakfast. It looks delicious — fresh papaya and watermelon, soft banana pancakes coloured pandanus green and hot ginger tea. I carry it to the spa downstairs and dangling my legs in the warm water while it fills, eat my feast morsel by morsel. Then I slip into the tepid water and lie still as bubbles rise to the surface all around me.

The view in front of me is a bright sky full of palm fronds, dancing dragonflies, pink and yellow frangipani, and off in the distance, the famous mountains, Batur and Agung. Yesterday Bagus had explained to me how Mount Agung is the centre of Bali, so that all directions, north, south, east, and west, are given in relation to the mountain, not the compass, so I must be sure to remember this when I ask directions. Bagus said maybe one day we could drive to Mount Agung but we would have to get up very early because after nine she is covered in cloud. I can see her clearly now.

A loud knock on the bathroom door startles me.

' _Selamat pagi_ , Marilyn,' Bagus sings from the other side of the door.

'Paaaaghee Bagus,' I call back.

'We leave in half hour, Marilyn, for your program.'

'Oh, okay, Bagus, but where are we going?'

'Silver and sarongs. And carving too if you like.'

'Okay, I'll be ready.'

'You like the spa Marilyn?'

'Ya, very bagus Bagus,' I call back, proud of my grasp of the language. 'You did a good job.'

'Okay, thank you Marilyn, see you in half hour.'

I get out reluctantly and as I start to dry myself I sense someone's presence nearby. For an alarming moment I feel completely exposed. I turn to see two eyes peering at me through the garden foliage. It's the young woman with the darting eyes who doesn't speak.

We lock eyes, then I smile at her. She flashes a big smile back and is gone.

13

The silver workshops are predictable. They have room for busloads of people to pour into the big warehouse, learn how to make a silver ring, browse the endless glass cabinets for a special brooch or necklace, haggle over the price and carry on, happy with their new acquisition, to the next tourist attraction.

The sarong warehouse is much the same. Here you can watch toothless women in a back room, weaving traditional _ikat_ designs, or roam the rows and rows of weaving and sarongs, never finding exactly the one you want, but buying it just in case it is. The manager is tired, complaining good heartedly that he has to dance every night for tourists and then prepare for a big ceremony in his local temple. He hasn't slept for days.

The last jewellery shop is the best. The young male assistants in pink sarongs and woven shirts, lolling about in the heat, jump to attention as we drive up, open my car door and treat me like a celebrity. Once inside they lean across the glass counter asking me questions about where I'm from, telling me with big smiles how one day they dream of travel, if only they can get a better job and earn more than seventy dollars a month. I am shocked at how little they earn. With even bigger smiles they agree with me.

'Ya, not enough but what can we do? Maybe you can help us,' they joke. 'Invite us to your country.'

'When I am rich,' I promise. 'I will invite you all.'

I realise this is a silly thing to say as I must appear to be already rich. Just rich in credit, I want to explain — the poor man's 'rich', with the sting in the tail that you pay double for later.

Bagus stays outside talking to the other drivers while the girl assistants show me bracelet after bracelet of turquoise, amethyst and smoky quartz, while stroking the skin of my arm telling me I am _cantik_ — beautiful, and how they wish their skin was light coloured like mine.

'No!' I insist. 'You are cantik! You would be a supermodel in my country... if you were a bit taller,' I add.

But being around them I do start to feel beautiful. I feel my greyness falling away, as if their beauty, even if they don't appreciate it, is rubbing off on me. And I buy three necklaces there.

o-o-o

'Can we drive out into the country Bagus?' I ask, as I get back in the car waving goodbye to my new friends, their email addresses and phone numbers stuffed in my purse. 'I've had enough shopping for today.'

I lean back in the bubble fabric seat. Bagus bends across and adjusts the lever so I can lean back more. His arm brushes mine briefly. No hairs. Not like mine. Does he notice? Is it strange for him — repulsive or attractive I wonder, as I sink into the seat.

We drive out into the green; through rice paddies, small forests, alongside rivers, across bridges, winding our way in and out of villages where bare-chested men, young and old, squat among piles of wavy woodchips at work on buddhas, lions, zebras, monkeys, elephants, giraffes, and cats! Tall cats, small cats, black cats, blue cats, Egyptian cats, CD holder cats, table leg cats! Who would come here to buy all these cats I wonder. Then I realise just like the stone carving village, this village supplies the whole world with carved cats! In my suburb alone, there must be five shops on one street selling these cats!

We haven't spoken the whole way. How does this man know when to speak, when not to speak, how much to let me be? I don't want him to stop the car. I want to keep driving forever through this landscape, letting the green roll into me.

'Are you hungry?' Bagus finally asks.

I nod my answer, suddenly ravenous as we pull into a small restaurant that looks out over another magnificent rice paddy view.

I wish I had been here when they discovered the tourist dollar value of the rice paddy view. Like when banana farmers in Mullumbimby in the seventies figured out they could sell their packing sheds to hippies for a song, and café owners in Newcastle in the nineties finally opened up their ugly brick walls to the sea view. And as soon as one did it everyone else followed and pretty soon the view was congested with so many buildings trying to get the view that the view was ruined. I've heard this is happening in Bali too, but not here. This view is still glorious.

We take our shoes off, climb onto the rice matting platform and sit cross-legged at a low wooden table. The young waitress, dressed in traditional sarong and lace blouse, brings the menus.

Bagus chooses suckling pig for us.

' _Babi guling_! Enak! You must try it. It's the best in Bali! People come from all over just to eat it at this _warung_!'

'More enak than your smoked duck?' I joke.

'Of course not, but almost,' he jokes back.

Lemonade bubbles up and down our straws. I feel lazy, happy, like I have skipped school and by some stroke of luck found the perfect friend to spend the day with.

'How old are your children Marilyn?' Bagus asks as the waitress places two large banana leaf parcels on plates in front of us.

' _Terima kasih_ ,' I say to the waitress, practicing my thank you for the first time.

She smiles and says,

' _Sama-sama_.'

'That means, you're welcome,' Bagus translates.

'Sama-sama,' I repeat. I like the sound of sama-sama the same way I like pagi. The sound alone gives the meaning.

'What did you ask, Bagus?' I say, as I have forgotten what we were discussing.

'Your children...'

'Oh yes, they are nineteen and twenty-two,' I answer.

'Oh, all grown up. You must have had them when you were young.'

'No I started late,' I reply.

'Ah, just like me. Now I am forty. Too old to have young children,' he laughs.

'Forty?' I tease. 'Noo! I thought maybe thirty-five.'

Bagus enjoys the compliment.

'And you Marilyn, how old are you?'

'Older than you Bagus, by quite a bit,' I laugh.

'No matter. We don't worry about such things,' he jokes back. 'You look about same age as me. Maybe couple of years older,' he concedes.

We unwrap the parcels on our plates. Steam pours up into our faces from the rice, pork and chilli spices trapped inside.

'How come you had children late?' I ask.

'Oh... doctors said Putu shouldn't have children, bad for her health. But then for years she was so unhappy she decided she wanted to, even if it made her sick. So we had my son and everything was okay. Then we had another son and finally our daughter. That's enough!'

'And Putu is okay?' I ask.

'Ya, she just gets very tired sometimes.'

'And your husband, Marilyn,' Bagus enquires, 'Is he older than you?'

There's no point keeping the lie going any longer I think, and it's going to take way too much effort to keep spinning the story. So I answer,

'He used to be a little older, when he was my husband. He's not my husband any more.'

Bagus looks alarmed.

'But...'

'We are divorced Bagus, for many years now.'

'Oh I see... but you didn't marry again?'

'No, my husband met someone else. I didn't.'

Bagus seems concerned.

'So you live alone? Who looks after you?'

'I live with my children. We look after each other.'

'But you are alone?' he asks again, as if he needs to make sure.

And I want to say, Yes, I am alone Bagus. I live alone with my children; I have no partner, no husband, I am no wife. I drive to work alone, no one drops me off or picks me up. I go to the supermarket alone, make decisions about whether to buy apples or pears, have we run out of toilet paper, do we need cheese, have we got enough cereal. Sometimes I call the kids from aisle six, just to check if we need more canned tomatoes, or pasta sauce, so as one friend pointed out to me, technically I am not alone. But I sleep alone, I wake alone, I dream alone. No one touches me in the night, Bagus. No one rolls over and bumps into me and whispers, 'Sorry, dear, am I snoring?' or 'Are you okay?' or 'Have you got enough blanket?'

And there are many more like me Bagus; beautiful women, intelligent women, delicious soft bodied women, all lying alone in their beds at night, no one to touch, no one to cuddle, no one to lean on, to stroke and whisper to 'Darling, you know I love you don't you. I know I am so lucky to have found you. You won't ever leave me will you?'

We are the modern widows Bagus, alone before our time, but unlike the widows of old we have no World War or epidemic to blame for our lone status, and there are so many of us! Some like me are divorced with children. Others who never married, or never got around to having children, also find themselves by choice or circumstance, alone in the prime of their lives. And the thing is, Bagus, like all widows, we get used to it. We get to like it. We even choose it. We like to stretch out in the bed, roll all over the mattress from top to bottom, side to side, upside down if we please. We can sleep with our feet on the pillows or our arse in the air all night, and nobody cares. And pretty soon we are defending our independence with a vengeance, and I know you want to say, 'But aren't you lonely? How can you live without a man? I would be so lonely without my wife.'

And you will be shocked when I tell you, maybe once I was. Once I was terribly lonely but as time went on I got to like it. I got to like not having to think about another person's problems as if they were my own, not having demands made on me for food, conversation, sex, ego bolstering, approval, emotional support, and the most important of all, the finding of lost objects. I love having all my moments to myself. I relish my solitude. Lonely? Of course I won't admit to it. Some of the time, yes, I am lonely, and yes, sometimes it does feel like something is missing. And sometimes, only sometimes, I feel so alone I think I know what it must feel like to die.

Bagus seems puzzled.

'What happened?' he wants to know.

'What?' I reply, absent-mindedly. 'Oh, it's a long story,' I say, 'too long to tell now.'

o-o-o

I gaze out at the coloured flags flapping in the rice fields wondering if they are to keep birds away or if they have another purpose. They look like Tibetan prayer flags, whose mantras are picked up by the wind and carried away on the air.

I have no desire to tell Bagus the blow-by-blow details of my marriage break-up. Once I would have had to tell the whole story, but finally, thank goodness, it has lost its grip.

It doesn't matter, the flags seem to be saying. All our hard-won battles and losses, all the huffing and puffing of our life and death dramas, will one day simply fade into the soft movement of air; in out, out in, around, up, down, all around.

14

When we arrive back from our long day trip, I get in the spa again. Why not? I think. I'm on holiday. I can sit here all day if I want to. I pour in flower petals I find sitting in a bowl beside the taps. One of the flowers has long thin spindly petals and a strong perfume like a blend of gardenia, jasmine and bergamot. Its scent fills every corner of the room. I slide into the warm petal sea and turn the bubble jet to slow.

On the drive back to town, Bagus had said to me out of the blue, 'If you were my wife, I would never leave you. I would always look after you.'

'Thank you,' I had answered, touched by his hypothetical promise, not quite sure what else to say.

My husband didn't leave me, I wanted to tell him. In the end it was hard to tell who left who. We had each left and come back so many times that the final leaving was hardly dramatic. But I was the one who packed my bags and walked away into the world. Away from my cosy family. Away from the three people I loved most in the universe. How can a mother leave her children? I still ask myself to this day, and yet the choice was clear. If I stayed, I would die the slow depression death of my mother. If I left, I had another chance at life. And yet no rainbows spontaneously appeared in the sky, no cathedral bells rang out a new day. My suffering didn't magically cease. But slowly and surely I began the long climb back to the places I'd forgotten I had left.

o-o-o

The sun is going down and still I lie in my bath water like a sleepy crocodile barely moving. Mosquitoes are coming out, buzzing around my head. I want to snap my jaws at them and scare them off. Instead I dip my head beneath the water for as long as I can, hold my breath and emerge again spraying water and petals all around.

I can hear the sounds of the village nearby. Voices calling out to each other, laughter, the put-put of a motorbike, the fairyland sound of gamelan music coming from different directions.

I'm hungry again. I know I should go out and try one of the restaurants in town but I don't feel up to being a tourist alone. I haul myself out of the spa and dress, then head down to the kitchen to see if someone can rustle up some food for me.

15

The compound is busy with activity. Putu and the other women are sitting together making elaborate decorations from bundles of long palm fronds. Intricate patterns fall from their fingers into the palm leaves, as if it is the easiest thing in the world to do.

' _Selamat malam_ , Maraleen,' Putu calls out to me when she sees me. 'Good evening. _Apa kabar_?' she inquires, then explains in a singsong voice like a teacher: 'How are you?'

Like a good student I try to imitate her.

'Selamat malaaam, Putu, apa keb...'

'ka — baaar,' Putu repeats.

'Apa kabaaaar?' I copy.

'Ya, bagus! It's simple ya?'

'Ya,' I repeat.

' _Baik-baik_ — I'm fine,' she explains.

'Bike, bike,' I repeat.

The other women smile at me, their fingers lost in a blur of green.

'You looking for Bagus?' Putu asks.

'No,' I reply, with an upward inflection meaning yes, noticing he is nowhere to be seen.

'He is at _banjar_ meeting. He is big man in banjar.'

'Oh,' I say.

'Next question — what is banjar?' Putu jokes. 'I am sorry Maraleen. Too much too fast, ya? Banjar is community organisation.'

I nod and squat down near the women watching closely for a few moments.

'You want to try Maraleen?'

'Ya,' I say, 'It's beautiful. How do you do that?'

'Easy,' Putu says, showing me the complicated movements of her fingers and wrists as she weaves the fronds in and out of each other.

She hands me her weaving and motions for me to continue. What looked so easy for her is impossibly difficult for me.

'Ah, not so simple for me though,' I say handing it back to her.

'Yaaaa, maybe, but you can learn in one week, or maybe one year,' she laughs. All the women giggle.

'You hungry, Maraleen?' asks Putu. 'Hungry is _lapar_ or _seduk_ in Balinese.'

'Yes,' I reply, 'how did you know?'

'Your eyes hungry, Maraleen,' she laughs. The other women laugh with her. I'm not sure if they are sending me up, but it's all so good-natured I don't care.

'Hungry for _makan_ — eat, ya! We have to fatten you up, Maraleen! You too skinny, make us look fat!'

They all laugh again. Putu puts her work down and goes to the kitchen calling out some words to Nyoman who is sitting with the old man reading a newspaper.

Nyoman comes over and squats beside me.

'You want to know what they are doing Marilyn?' he asks.

'Yes,' I reply, 'what is it all for?'

'It's for _Galungan_. All the women must prepare like this, making all the offerings for the family temple and the village temple as well.

'Just the women do this?' I ask.

'Women always make the offerings, but the men have much work to do too, closer to the festival. They have to go and cut the _penjor_ which is a big bamboo decoration that stands at the entrance to every home. And they have to kill the pig and chickens and prepare food and many other things,' he says.

'What is the reason for the festival?' I ask, as we walk together to sit on the edge of the centre platform. Nyoman offers me a bottle of still water from a cardboard box under the high bed and takes one for himself.

'Galungan is like holy day when the gods visit us,' he continues, 'but it is really a celebration of the victory of good over evil. It happens every six or seven months or every two hundred and ten days to be exact.

'That's quite often,' I remark.

'It is all part of the calendar of ritual we must follow,' he says 'it's so complicated sometimes even Balinese don't understand it!' He laughs as he continues, 'Three days before Galungan is a difficult time when the evil spirits come to earth and create all sorts of disturbances to test and provoke us, just to see how strong our resolve to resist evil really is. The last day before Galungan is the worst day in the year for struggling with emotions and anger. It is a test of self-control and if you fail on this day then all the ceremonies you are about to take part in become useless.'

'Oh I see,' I remark, intrigued by the level of detail he is giving me.

'So when does the festival begin?' I ask.

'Next Wednesday is Galungan Day,' he replies.

So the next few days are crucial. 'What about westerners, are we tested too?'

'Of course,' he replies, 'When you stay in Bali you are part of our family.'

'I'd better be careful then,' I tease.

'I think you will be okay,' he laughs. 'Anyway next Wednesday you can join us.'

'Oh, I wish I could,' I reply, 'but I have to leave before then.'

'That's a pity,' he says. 'You must see it next time, and stay for the feast. There are so many delicious foods to eat. You get so full, like at your Christmas time, I think.'

Putu has brought me a plate filled with an assortment of delicious looking food: rice and chicken and some kind of greens, fish and tofu.

'Like this.' I laugh.

'Yes,' Nyoman replies, 'only much, much more.'

I thank him for his explanation.

'Oh that is just the simple version,' Nyoman says, 'but at tourism school they say simple in the beginning is better.'

I nod in agreement. I thank Putu and excuse myself to take my dinner back to my room.

o-o-o

I sit on the big daybed in front of the carved doors looking out over the pond, eating slowly, watching fireflies flit above the water lilies, lighting them up with flashes of yellow.

The sound of water gurgles through the ponds and waterfalls flowing all around me. Frogs are starting their evening rhythm jive of deadpan call and response. I wonder if they ever deviate from the particular sound they have been allotted; like when they get excited or happy, or do they stay in the same dependable pattern for their whole life span?

I can feel my body starting to relax. I could fall asleep here if the mozzies weren't so ferocious. As I retreat to my room, I bid goodnight to the frog rhythm band, asking them to eat as many mosquitoes as they please.

16

My eyes are open, awake to the night again. It must be earlier then last night, as now there is hardly a sound to be heard out in the darkness. I lie under the fan and wonder how the kids are. They'll be fine, I reassure myself. I've been away plenty of times before, escaping to the shack for weekends and occasional weeks here and there. It's my way of weaning them into adulthood. It's too easy for mothers to still do the little motherly things that children love, like cooking and cleaning and helping with all their problems. Not that I felt I was ever very good at those things. I always thought my ex was a better mother than me, especially in the early days after I left. He was juggling a full-time job, two young kids and all his affairs. He should have won Mother _and_ Father of the Year, hands down!

When we finally worked out our divorce settlement, my husband got the house and car and I got the country shack. It may sound a bit one-sided but as the kids were staying with him, I figured he needed it all. And of course I felt guilty to be the one walking out, but really the shack was the only asset from our marriage I was attached to. In fact it was my secret fantasy that I would just retire and live there like a mad hermit in a cave, meditating, writing and living off plants and shellfish from the wild beach a half hour's walk away. Reality however dictated that I find a job and make a living just like everyone else, so I went back to study, turning my outdated teaching qualification into a librarian's degree. Not because I loved libraries, in fact I have always hated their hushed, soft-carpeted tones, but because the only things in life that excited me anymore were books. So I learned everything about them: how they are made, how to repair them, look after them, organise them, keep them safe and stacked in rows, how to share them with others, how to find them when they got lost, how to give them a decent burial when they are too old to give coherent joy any more.

I lived off a meagre student allowance moving about from friends' houses to rented rooms, learning to buy one tomato instead of one kilo of tomatoes, one carrot, one onion, one apple, one bread roll for my one egg dinner. And because there was nowhere at first for the kids to stay with me, I would turn up at my ex's place two or three nights during the week to cook dinner and put the kids to bed when he was working late, then sleep over every second weekend when he would go away on trips with his latest girlfriend.

It wasn't an easy way to separate. Every time I went back, I felt like the hired help or the baby sitter, surrounded by all the things of my family home only it wasn't my home anymore. I tried hard to see myself just as a friend and co-parent, as we had decided we were, but it wasn't so simple. What was clear, thank god, was my children were still my children, and while he loved his lover in their twin cotton waffle gowns motel spa room, I filled our ex-marital bed with our children's love. We would stay up late and watch old videos or read our favourite books over and over, six times in a row if we wanted to. We had pillow fights and wrecked the bed then put it back together again. We made complex cubby houses with long tunnels that connected to the mother ship bed and slept all night on all the cushions of the house, bringing in bowls of chips and glasses of fizz that we didn't care if we spilled all over the carpet, until finally we would fall asleep, arms flung around each other, our warm bodies breathing together, choking each other with our love.

Yeah, they'll be okay, I think, as I adjust the mosquito net around the bed in an attempt to foil the one or two persistent mozzies which have found their way through. They will even forgive me for going on a holiday without them... as long as I remember to bring home some presents.

17

The rooster chorus fails to rouse me this morning. This time the gentle _swishk_ _swishk_ of sweeping outside my room welcomes me into the day; I look out to see Wayan sweeping leaves from the path with a hand broom. Bagus told me her husband, his cousin, is away building telecommunication towers in Java. He had travelled there a few months after the Kuta bombing looking for work and sent money back from any job he could find. He was the only one in the family able to find work at that time. His income helped pay the interest off the debt and buy the family enough food to live on. For months they ate only vegetables and rice, with a bit of chicken once a week. His father, Bagus's uncle, also living with them then, became ill, but with no money to send him to hospital, he just got worse until he died.

Bagus's aunt, the very old thin lady from the daybed, doesn't look far from death either and yet she is busy in the garden below. Clothed only below the waist in a faded sarong, her dried up flaps of breasts swaying like elephant ears, she pokes a long stick high into the tree, expertly hooking the highest frangipani blooms to fall like snow flakes around her feet. She is as thin and bony as my mother, who spends her days in an old people's home being watched over by strangers who pull and push at her clothing, getting her in and out of the shower and making her eat and drink when she has lost all her appetite for food and life; waiting out her days in an armchair far away from the garden she loved to roam in.

There's another good source of guilt to add to the list; abandoning your mother to a place she always said she never wanted to end up in. Even though it's a very nice place and the care she gets is far better than you could ever give, you still run the scenario through your mind — of turning the garage you don't have into a granny flat and redeeming your maternal instincts by devoting the rest of your life to your elderly mother, your children and your soon to be, children's children. And while you are at it, why not get in a few Asian students so they can help pay the rent, because now you can barely afford the three bedroom house you had to take when the kids in their teenage years said they wanted to come and live with you. Not because they were sick of their dad, but because they wanted to see what it was like to live full-time with a mother before they headed out into the world on their own. Although now they think they may put that off because living with a mother is so much nicer and cheaper in every way and a mum is easy to live with, even though she is off in her own little world most of the time; it's a good thing because she's not always on our backs in that over-motherly way and is much more fun to be with now than when we were young, when she seemed to be sad a lot of the time and crying every day...

o-o-o

I don't know how I got through those early years when each day felt like wading through wet cement and just to get out of bed in the morning required a huge effort but somehow you manage to get the kids up and dressed and ready for school and kiss them goodbye with all the other mothers at the school gate and go home and fall on the bed again to weep your way through the day until three when you freshen yourself up and arrive back at the school gate with all the other mothers once more, smiling and so happy to see your bright shining children, for now you have some distraction from your unhappiness and you can busy yourself with shopping and cooking and homework and bathing and reading bedtime stories and long cuddles and kisses, before entering once more the long night of sadness ahead, where you endlessly consult all your experts: Jung and Mindell, the _I Ching_ , Hillman, Trungpa, Schierse Leonard, Moore and Campbell, trying to find some clues, trying to piece together the mystery of your life, to find out what happened, what went wrong, and to ask, is this kind of pain inevitable? is it just part of life, is it something we all have to go through? this feeling of being broken, with all the parts of you splintered and scattered about like tiny shards of glass and you know there is no way you will ever pick them all up and put them back together again, and even if you could, where would you start? But at least you find comfort in the words of these gurus and these moments late at the end of the evening when, exhausted, you give up your railing and wailing and just sit, with the night at your back and the stars at your feet, and allow peace to finally come.

o-o-o

Bagus's aunty has enough blooms now. She puts down her long stick and picks up the basket. Wayan finishes sweeping and comes over to help her but she insists she can do it alone. Together they walk slowly down the path, their voices joining the happy gurgling of the ponds around them.

18

Bagus is busy today, so Nyoman takes me into town on the back of his motorbike. I tell him I want to see everything on foot so we decide Ubud Market is a good starting point. From there I can fan out in all directions and always have a central landmark to return to.

The street outside the market is jammed with buses, _bemos_ , motorbikes and people. It feels like the week before Christmas, with tourists caught up in the frenzy of locals buying up big for Galungan. I push my way through the outer layer of stalls selling clothing, sarongs, carpets, bedspreads, bamboo ware, cane ware, basket ware, every kind of ware, into the central part, past flower sellers, cake sellers, coconut sellers, and descend to the dark smoky depths of the food market where meat lies on big slab counters and fish fresh from the sea wants to leap into your basket, where you can sit and eat saté and drink hot tea in the dim light or wander the honeycomb aisles overflowing with all kinds of nuts and legumes and strange shaped vegetables pulled that morning from the earth, all the varieties of fresh ginger and chillies and lemongrass and peppers and everything you need if you are going to cook the Balinese way.

I come out at a stairway and follow it to an upstairs level where they sell fabric, manchester, carved goods and clothing, all hanging or piled up high, so much of it, you wonder who buys all this stuff. The sellers call out as I pass, 'Hello hello, just looking, hello, hello give you a good price. Mrs, Mrs, come and look Mrs...'

I want to look but I don't want to get talked into buying stuff I don't want, until I see a rack of the most beautiful garments; the blouses I have seen on all the Balinese women going to the temple or waiting in restaurants. Two young women leaning listlessly across a mountain of fabric, leap up when they notice my interest.

'You want _kebaya_ Mrs? Look beautiful on you.'

They are beautiful, not like any I have seen elsewhere; fine cotton with lace around the low neckline that falls into deep lace triangles at the front below the waist, in vibrant greens, pure whites, bright yellows, deep pinks. I know I want one, and they know I want one, and as they construct an impromptu fitting room to try them all on, one by one, we talk.

'Where you from Madam?'

'Australia.'

'Oh Australia. We like Australia. You very friendly. Australians very relaxed, laugh a lot, like Balinese. What your name Mrs?'

'Marilyn.'

'Ah, Maraleen. Nice name. I am Ketut and this is Made.'

'When you arrive?' asks Ketut.

'Yesterday, no — day before.'

'Your first time to Bali?' Made asks.

'Yes.'

'You like Bali?' Ketut wants to know.

'Yes, very much so far.'

'You alone?'

'Yes.'

'Where your husband?'

'I am divorced.'

'Ooooh, so many women from your country divorce,' exclaims Ketut. 'They get sick of husband?'

'Many reasons.'

'If we get sick of husband, what can we do, we are stuck forever.' They laugh out loud but then become serious again.

'If Balinese woman want divorce she must leave kids with husband. Then no one look after her. Family has shame. Too difficult. You are luckeee then, have freedom, nice clothes, nice body. You luckeeee! Balinese woman's life _susaaaah_.'

'Susaaah?' I repeat

'Too hard... difficuuult.'

'What is the most difficult?'

'Oooh... where I start? Make offerings, look after children...' says Made.

'I finish work here four o'clock,' Ketut explains, 'I have go home, bath children, feed, put to bed, sit up late making all the offerings. Then husband wants,' she giggles, 'you know, me toooo tired. But if say no maybe him unfaithful.'

'Oh,' I laugh, 'Balinese men are unfaithful too?'

'Not my husband, he faithful, but many do like that.'

'You want Balinese husband Maraleen?' asks Ketut. 'We find you one.' They grin with eyes wide, waiting for my response.

'Thank you,' I say. 'I think I am okay.'

'Then just find you good lover,' they joke.

'Are Balinese men good lovers?' I ask.

'Mmm... depends, I think maybe need training,' Ketut laughs. 'Maybe you can teach them Maraleen.'

They are in stitches now.

'Is your husband a good lover?' I ask Ketut.

'Yeees! He make me veery happy! But Made too shy, no tell husband what she likes.' Ketut pushes Made affectionately. Made hides herself behind some hanging sarongs.

'Maybe you can write it in a letter and give it to him. With diagrams,' I suggest. We all laugh.

'Will you help us write it, Maraleen?' they jokingly plead.

'Pleeeze!'

I'm keen on the lime green kebaya and they talk me into buying a traditional patterned, deep red silk sarong and sash. They also sell me a corset-like under garment that pulls my waist in and pushes up my breasts. Everyone wears one they tell me, even the _ibu-ibu_ — the old women. They push and pull my thin body into the skin-toned corset doing up all the hooks and eyes from the back. When I put the kebaya on I can see the reason why. Suddenly my body has a shape I haven't seen in years. I linger in the small mirror checking to see if it is really true.

I change back into my casual clothes and make a poor attempt at haggling over the price, justifying my defeat by thinking they must need the money more than I do and if I was shopping at home I would spend much more for something nowhere near as special as this. I pick up my precious parcel and ask directions to the exit from the maze of stalls I got lost in.

'Is it up this way and a little to the left?' I ask, pointing.

Ketut tries to be serious, but she is doubled over with giggles again.

'That's right Maraleen that's where you will find it.'

Then she adds,

'Or if that doesn't work down a little to the right, but not too hard,' laughing so much she can't speak anymore.

A woman of my age who I assume to be their boss arrives and gives them a stern look. I try in a more formal tone.

'Thank you, Ketut, Made. I really must go.'

'Ok, thank you Maraleen,' they call out to me as I walk away.

' _Selamat jalan-jalan_!'

19

I feel like striding out which is hard to do on the irregular pavement that zigzags up and down over the drains that run underneath the main street. But leaving the main road and ducking down the small laneways that lead from it, I can get up a reasonable pace. I walk up every lane I come across, without worrying where I am or which direction I am going in. Everywhere people are just going about their day, and don't seem to be at all bothered by tourists like me wandering past, peering in on their lives.

I come out near a soccer field and skirt around its edges back onto the busy street. I almost step on a dishevelled young woman in dusty, mismatched clothes, squatting in the gutter in the shade of a car. A runny-nosed baby is strapped around her in a dirty sarong. The woman puts out her small cupped hand towards me and with a pitiful look, pushes her hand into my leg. I'm not sure what to do. I usually give to beggars at home; in fact I'm a soft touch for a few regulars who can always count on me for some dollars towards a 'night's accommodation'. But I had read in the guidebook that it's not good to give in to beggars and street vendors as you will never shake them off. So I walk on.

She isn't about to give up on me as she can sense my wavering and so she follows me like a cat, weaving in and out of the parked cars, turning up ahead of me, following just behind and when she realises I am not going to hand over any money she starts on another tack. Staying close by my side as we walk she repeats in a low whisper,

'Just give me one lipstick, just give me one lipstick, just give me one lipstick!'

I stop in my tracks. I am so intrigued by her demand that I search around in my bag for any spare lipstick I have. I find one, almost new, a colour I tried but didn't like. I hand it over. She gives a smile, tucks it in her clothing and puts her hand out for more.

'Sorry,' I say, 'no more lipstick to spare. I have to look good too.'

She doesn't budge. I have to admire her persistence. I pull out some coins and drop them into her hand. She smiles a shy thank you and heads back in the direction she came from.

o-o-o

I stop for lunch at a small restaurant and choose 'Nasi Goreng Spesial'. I don't know why fried rice never tastes this good back home. I want to ask for the recipe but I am too embarrassed. As I savour the fresh chilli flavour of the yellow rice and cool my throat with an iced coconut drink, I eavesdrop on the conversation at the table next to me. A forty-something American couple in matching baby blue Bermuda shorts, T-shirts and sensible shoes are discussing their driver. Well, the husband is. His wife has her head in a fat crime novel.

'What a nice man he is hun, didn't he serve us well? He's a natural at it, how polite and friendly and what wonderful people the Balinese are. They all seem so happy all the time! What do you say hun? Maybe we should come back someday and study the culture. You could take up Balinese painting, and I could try my hand at wood-carving. We could build a nice little house and live surrounded by this peace that they all seem to have, that we have lost in our ratbag lifestyle of rush, rush, rush trying to make enough money to have a good life and an overseas holiday once or twice a year. What do you think hun? Let's put it in our ten-year plan. Once we have the kids in college we can wind up the business and I might just call Bagooz now and ask if he has any spare rice paddies. We could put a down payment on it and have it paid off in no time because you can see the prices are gonna go through the roof any day now and then we will be really kicking ourselves. What do you think hun?'

Wife replies without looking up from her book. 'I'm sorry hun. I'm on the last chapter. It's getting really exciting. Tell me later okay, hun.'

Husband is already out in the street on the phone to Bagooz. I wonder if it's my Bagus. I guess there are a lot of Baguses here. I don't think he has any rice paddies, but anything is possible.

I pay my bill then set off walking again, along the main streets, past shops selling exquisite Bali chic, designer clothing in all the earth's colours, antique wood-carvings, exclusive hand-crafted silver jewellery, and silk sarongs far more expensive than the one I bought.

Upmarket restaurants and cocktail bars with their cool clean lines beckon; spas and beauty salons advertise rejuvenating mud baths and cucumber scrubs; boutique hotels and guesthouses with doormen in traditional dress wait to offer you a frangipani lei and take your bags; galleries, quirky shops, cafés; and everywhere local people just hanging out, sitting, squatting, chatting, leaning, laughing with each other. There must be some stressed Balinese somewhere I think, but I haven't seen them yet. The only furrowed brows belong to tourists, worrying about their schedules, if they just got ripped off, or if dinner tonight will be up to scratch.

I pass an internet café advertising high speed connection. I'm tempted to wander in and check my emails. A couple of dreadlocked hippy chic girls burst through the doors complaining.

'Its soooo slow, I'm going back to the other place,' says one.

'Ok, see you back at the yoga studio,' calls out the other as she gets on an old-fashioned bicycle and cycles off. I keep walking. Surely I can live without email for a few days. My ignorance will just have to be my bliss.

20

Along another street, down a hill and up a stairway set back from the street I find an entrance to a small temple. The red air roots of tall banyan trees hang like fringes over the gateway. I'm not sure if it is okay to go in but as I walk up the steps, a generous faced woman in her forties, dressed in white kebaya and sarong, comes out from the shade.

'Hello,' she says, 'Would you like to see around the temple?'

'Yes,' I reply. 'Is it okay to have a look?'

'Ya, but you need sarong and sash and you must cover your arms to pay respect. And you cannot go in if you have bleeding.'

'Oh,' I laugh, 'no problems there.'

'You can hire sarong here if you like.'

'What about this?' I ask, opening my bag to show her my new things.

'Perfect,' she says. 'Come with me.'

She leads me to a small alcove near the entrance.

'My name is Kadek,' she says shaking my hand. 'I am the priest of this temple.'

'I am Marilyn,' I reply, a little surprised. 'Women can be priests in Bali?' I ask.

'Of course,' Kadek answers. 'I am _pemangku_ , the local priest of this temple.'

'Oh, I see. And you have a husband and family?'

'Yes,' she laughs, 'just like everyone else. You are here on holiday?'

'Yes,' I reply. Then I remember to add, 'and to do some writing.'

'Ooooh,' she says, 'will you write about Ubud?'

'Yes... maybe I will,' I answer in a hopeful half truth.

'I would like to read it if you do,' she says.

Her confidence in me gives me a boost and I let her take control of dressing me as if I were a child, pulling the sarong around tightly, doing up all the hooks and eyes of the undergarment, buttoning the kebaya, and tying the sash around my waist in a special knot. She stands back to survey her handiwork, gives a big smile and says,

'Cantik!'

'Terima kasih,' I reply shyly, as she leads me out into the main courtyard of the temple and begins showing me around.

There's not much to see; open-sided pavilions and elaborate gateways with stairs leading up to them like I have seen at the palace. There are no icons or statues like you would expect to see in a temple. As if reading my thoughts she says, 'Looks empty ya, but when ceremony is on it is so full you can't move. Offerings reaching up to the sky, and music and dancing all night long. Come next week you will see.'

I nod and ask if I can take some photos. Kadek waits in the shade while I wander about snapping away and when I am finished she asks, 'Would you like to learn how to pray, Balinese way?'

'Yes,' I say, 'I can do that? I don't have to be Hindu?'

'Yes, you can pray with us, simple way, it's okay!'

She leads me into an enclosed courtyard where a small thatch-roofed platform is piled high with fruit, flowers and incense. She motions to me to sit nearby on my knees and gives me a stick of incense and a small woven basket full of different coloured flowers. Sitting next to me she lights the incense and shows me how to pass my hands through its smoke to purify them.

'The smoke of the incense carries our prayer to the heavens and the flowers are our gift to the gods,' she explains.

'First you invoke your spirit to come, to bless your body,' she says in a low voice. She utters some words softly and bringing her palms together, then raises them to her forehead in a gesture of prayer, beckoning me to do the same.

She passes her hands through the incense smoke again and picks up a yellow flower from the basket, holding it in the tips of her fingers with her palms together.

'Now we invoke the sun as witness,' Kadek says as she brings her hands and the flower to her forehead again.

She does the same with a small bunch of different coloured flowers, blue, red, yellow, and says, 'Now we offer to the deity residing in this temple.'

Each time I follow, trying to imitate Kadek's graceful movements until finally she takes a white flower and repeating the gesture, tells me, 'Now from the gods in all directions and the guardians of the positive and negative, we ask blessings.'

She tucks the white flower behind her ear. 'Now we give thanks.'

We bring our palms together again at our forehead as we did in the beginning and remain for a moment in contemplation.

It feels easy and simple and within my grasp. I thought it would be much more complicated. There is no heavy presence of a punishing god or overwhelming deities, just the simplicity of offering incense and flowers to the air.

But we are not finished yet. Kadek gets up and comes back with a vessel that looks like a large metal milkshake container and a brush-like implement. She sprinkles me three times with water then shows me how to put my right hand over my left and places water in the cup of my hands. She motions to me to drink. I am not sure if I should, but I go ahead anyway and drink three times as she instructs. Next she places in my hands some grains of wet rice and shows me how to find three unbroken grains to swallow and more to press onto my forehead and at each temple. Now I understand why all over town I have seen Balinese men and women with rice pressed to their skin in this way. Kadek then invites me to place an offering of money on a plate and offer it to the small roofed platform adding to the pile of fruit, cakes, money and incense already there.
I like the invisibility of their gods I decide, as I step back to pick up my bag and say my goodbye. Their presence alone is strong enough. A breeze shivers through the air around us as if confirming my thoughts. Kadek shakes my hand again warmly and wishes me a good holiday.

'And don't forget to send me your book,' she adds. 'I hope you will put me in it!'

I am flattered that she wants to be in my book and I promise to send her the first autographed copy.

I walk out into the street so relaxed I feel almost drunk. But I manage to hail a motorbike driver and, as I am still in my traditional outfit, perch side-saddle on the pillion, as I have seen all the Balinese women do, and direct him back to Bagus's place.

o-o-o

When I walk into the compound everyone is there. The women are still at work on the offerings. The kids are lying on the central platform drawing and playing; the old man sitting in his usual spot. Nyoman and Bagus are at work in the yard turning a section of it into garden. Plants in pots that have been propagated in the garden near my room stand by waiting to be transplanted into the soil. When they see me come in, they all gather around.

'Oh cantik, cantik,' they all say, 'now you are a real Balinese woman.'

'Only one thing missing,' Bagus says. He picks an orange hibiscus flower from a bush and puts it behind my ear.

'Aaaah,' they all sigh.

Putu comes over to feel my sarong. She straightens and adjusts my sash at the same time.

'Mmm, silk, expensive Maraleen?' she asks.

'I don't know,' I reply. 'I think so.'

'Mm, someone gonna be jealous of you,' she teases, patting me on the bottom again like she did at the river. I think she is talking about the sarong but I am not sure.

I hope I don't look too wannabe-Balinese but I love these clothes and they all seem genuinely happy to see me dressed in this way.

I want to tell them about my adventures, but I am suddenly queasy and in need of a toilet. I rush up the path to my room and make it to the bathroom just in time.

21

'I don't feel like eating,' I tell Bagus when he looks in on me later. 'Maybe something I ate. I'll sleep it off.' He leaves again, saying he will check on me in the morning.

I try to sleep but I have to keep running to the toilet. That's one major design flaw I will have to tell Bagus — you need a toilet upstairs as well. I thrash about in the bed under the fan. I'm nauseous but thank God not to the point of throwing up. That would be too embarrassing. I distract myself from my discomfort by drifting back to my conversation with Ketut and Made at the market.

I wonder if Balinese women ever have affairs. Sounds like they would never have time and yet we all know time can always be found for pleasure, no matter how brief. And you can bet the men would never find out, for women are far better at concealment than men. But it seems that women here have more to lose. I wonder if Putu would ever be unfaithful to Bagus. I assume not, but there's no way to know. It looks like everyone here flirts with everyone all the time, but maybe that's as far as it goes.

When my husband was having his affairs I used to think I should just go out and have one too, but somehow I couldn't. Not because I was being faithful to him — it was our family I didn't want to betray. And yet if I had gone and had a real 'in your face' affair, I think it would have cured him. 'Like cures like', they say.

So instead of imagining my own lovers, I would entertain the fantasy that if my husband, his lovers and I, could all find a way to coexist together, we could make it work, and no one would have to resort to the degrading feelings and behaviours that jealousy breeds. If we all stopped behaving like princesses and stomping and stamping and saying 'but I want him all to myself' and instead behaved like adults and worked out a fair time sharing arrangement, so everyone had passion, love, time alone and family time with the kids... and if everyone's priority was that no one felt left out and rejected, but instead felt loved and included... and if we all thought about the other before ourselves... if we wished the person we thought was causing all our pain, all the happiness in the world, all the tea in China, all the hats in Mexico, then there was a chance we could make it work!

And then I used to think that if one person getting what they want is so painful to those around him, it just shows us how flimsy our own happiness must be. Like how it never occurs to us that we could just go after the thing _we_ want, instead of railing against the unfairness of what he has and we don't have. Perhaps then the triangle of pain might dissolve and fall apart, the triangle of pain might have no power at all — because finally you are happy doing the thing that for years you put on the back burner or were too afraid to think about; the one thing you always wanted, that somehow you could never give to yourself!

And why couldn't we support each other in this striving? Why couldn't we have a meeting and draw up a plan and ask each other, 'What is it you really want? How can I help you get it?'

And why not invite the mistress to the meeting so everyone could put their true desire in the ring, and instead of their desire for each other, state their deep down hidden desire, beyond flesh, beyond sex, beyond people, beyond love, beyond comfort and cuddles and the warmth of another human being all through the night — the one thing you long to do, that will nurture you, that if you give it its head, will break through all barriers, all boundaries, all insurmountable roadblocks — to reach that pinnacle, that goal, that dream...

And so husband says...

'Well I want a garage. I have always wanted to build a garage. To do it all myself. Just to know I could do it, and do it well.'

And mistress is saying...

'Well actually I want to breed and raise golden retriever puppies on a property by a river with a little boat that I can row about in the moonlight.'

And wife is saying...

'Yes, well actually I want to go on a trip and meet new people and just be myself and laugh and feel relaxed and unselfconscious enough to really be me.'

And so they agree to help each other do these things and are so busy working towards their dreams, they don't have so much time to worry about who is with who, and who is getting what, and who humiliated who in the long history of their pain, for now they have transformed it into something that everyone can have... and they invite each other into their new lives to meet their new friends and help everyone around them do the same.

o-o-o

I wake up as my insides are trying to heave their way out of my gut onto the bed. Luckily I am prepared and I throw up into a big basin I found earlier on the balcony. I vomit until I can't possibly vomit any more and then I vomit again. At least the other end of me has stopped running, I think thankfully.

Purification, my yoga friends call this. They tell me it always happens to them in their first week in a new ashram. It's the body's way of clearing out the old to make way for the new. I don't know if I agree but I certainly feel empty.

I fall into sleep again, the sound of rain on the big leaves outside the balcony, massaging my aching abdomen.

22

In the morning I am still feeling sick and I can't eat breakfast. Putu sends a green jelly drink for me to try instead.

' _Jamu_ , good for your belly,' Wayan says.

I drink it down. Its coolness soothes my throat. It does seem to help but I still feel weak.

Bagus comes to visit, very concerned. I am lying on the bed, a sarong wrapped around me, my hair sticking out, my face pale and haggard — not my most attractive look.

He sits on the end of the bed and matter-of-factly massages my feet, questioning me like a doctor, asking me every place I ate and drank at, trying to find the source of my pathogen. I tell him I think it could have been the holy water at the temple.

'Nooo,' he dismisses, 'holy water is holy!'

He is a skilful masseur. He pulls and cracks my toes and I cry out in pain.

'Where did you learn this Bagus?' I ask in between grimaces.

'I used to be masseur at one of the big resorts when I was younger. I massaged many famous people.'

'That's good,' I barely manage to utter, 'very bagus.'

I relax as he lightens his touch, working the soles of my feet as if they were clay. It's comforting and soothing and even in my weakened state undeniably erotic. I don't want him to stop. But like all simple pleasures, I know it has to end.

'I am sorry Marilyn, we have many preparations to make at the temple today, but I will call my aunty-in-law. She lives not far away. She can come and give you complete treatment.'

He finishes off by rhythmically banging the edges of his hands across my feet and then pulls the bedcover over me and tucks me in.

'Make sure you rest and I will check on you later.'

I mumble a thank you. I can't speak. I am so touched. I can't remember the last time anyone tucked me in like that.

o-o-o

Why have I gone without touch for so long? I think, as he closes the door behind him. It can't be natural and yet the longer you go without it, the harder it is to imagine it ever becoming a normal part of your life again. Have I really become the hermit in my cave as I said I would? Only my cave is a room in a house where I live with my kids in a city full of people who go out all the time: to the movies, to the park, out to breakfast, out to lunch, to the club, to the beach, parties and barbeques, weddings, shopping and morning coffees in cute arcades. Lovers and husbands and wives and girlfriends and boyfriends holding hands and hugging and arms around each other and kissing each other goodbye and hello and how are you, good to see you and did you have a good trip?

Why have I given up on all that? Because it's too hard? Because I am lazy? Or is it just too humiliating to admit that I have failed at the one thing everyone else seems to do so naturally — human-to-human intimacy.

It's not that I haven't put some effort into it. When I finally came to terms with being single again and thought I had better make an attempt to meet someone new, I tried answering some personal ads and even placed some myself, meeting strangers in cafés and systematically conducting job-like interviews with men I would never in a million years look at, let alone go out with. But those were the days before internet dating was considered safe and to ask for a photo seemed rude, and so you would be stuck for an hour trying to find the nicest way to say sorry, I'm not interested, to someone you could see was as lonely as you, but you knew that was no basis for an awkward date, let alone a relationship.

And if you did actually meet someone who looked okay and sounded okay and seemed like a nice enough person, you would do the formalities like dinner or a movie and then start making out in the car park on the bonnet of his car and end up at his place having amazing sex all over his apartment, because you were both so starved for physical contact, and forgetting to find out if you do in fact have anything in common, you realise on the third date, when you don't even bother with dinner or a movie, but just head straight for the bed, that his taste in clothes and music and books and political persuasion is the opposite to yours, and when he lets slip that he is the secretary of a new political party called, 'We Will Be Men Again', you politely excuse yourself and never call again.

And then there was the man who told you in his first sentence that physically he didn't think you would suit him but you could be his practice friend, as since his wife had died he found it difficult to talk to women, though he didn't seem to have any trouble telling you every detail of her painful death, and his anger that he hadn't left her years ago, because now he felt he had wasted his best years on someone who is no longer around and he is sorry to burden you with this, but he hasn't shared these feelings with anyone and you are such a good listener that he wonders if he can see you again — just as a friend, he stresses. You tell him you are not a grief counsellor and if you were, you would charge $120 an hour for the service you just gave, so if he is willing to pay that, yes, you will be quite happy to see him on a weekly basis.

Following him came the truck driver, the rugby player, the Italian masseur, the balding professor, the boating man, the crippled guy, the farmer, the retired business consultant, the environmentalist, and most of them didn't want to know anything about you but were happy you were just there listening and saying, uh huh, uh huh and mm in all the right places, and while they were droning on, you had the bright idea that you could marry one of these superannuated males, and all your financial problems would be over and for not a lot of effort, you could have a nice house, a blended family, you could give up work and write full-time, then in the not so distant future Boating Man would die of a heart attack and there might be a bit of a tussle over the will with his side of the family, but you would be generous and they could take half the property and the boat and you would keep the holiday house, the super and life insurance and that would be fair...

But you didn't, you wouldn't, you couldn't imagine becoming so intimate with someone you met this way that you would spend the rest of your life with them, and so you retreated into singledom again until...

o-o-o

A few years later Boating Man, would have his own video profile on the biggest dating site in the country. He would be man of the month with the most amount of hits on his page, for as a grey-haired, financially independent, sixty-something, heterosexual male in boating whites and boating shoes, he is a catch for any woman aged eighteen to seventy-five, and he knows it. So he doesn't just take the first Mary Jane as he would have once, but waits for quality, and when he finds it, doesn't close his profile down but keeps his hand in, just in case something better comes along.

So like Boating Man when I was sick enough of spending so much time with myself, I moved with the times and ventured onto the dating sites. I had my profile on a few of them. All nom de plumes of course. Kissing Girl was a popular one. CumtoMama was off the Richter on the Adult page, or Nicegirl on the more respectable sites drew an interesting response. And depending on your mood, you could move between them, being the girl next door one moment and the whore from hell the next.

It might seem shocking that a middle-aged divorced widow like me would indulge herself in this way, but in the privacy of your own home you could become all your fantasies at once. And everyone was doing it. Dressing up in sexy underwear and posing on web cam, having online sex on instant messenger with the pack of prurient piranha that lay waiting to talk dirty as soon as you got on line. Even Boating Man had an Adult persona — Hand Glider — and soon he was man of the month on Adult as well.

But there's only so far you can go with dirty talk and though the guys never seem to tire of its repetitive banality, women, even if they don't admit it, are always searching for something more, so they move on to join book clubs and knitting circles or become CEOs.

And then Boating Man one day, after a wild all-night Viagra-fuelled session with his latest hopeful, fell from his boat and drowned. When I read his obituary on all the sites he played on, I unplugged my web cam, cancelled my profiles and decided that even if it has become the most popular meeting place of all time, and all over the world you hear of people falling in love this way, putting their lives and bank accounts together and living happily ever after, if I have to join a meat market to meet someone, I would rather be alone. If I can't meet a nice person who wants to be with me and me with them, in the natural course of my life, so be it.

And if that means I go without touch, then I will just have to get a lot of massages.

23

I make myself get out of bed and attempt to sit like a normal person on the balcony sipping some tea. I don't hear Bagus's aunty-in-law until she is right beside me.

'Maraleen?' she says softly.

I turn to see a handsome woman in her sixties with a mischievous face, hair in a bun, dressed in a traditional gold and brown batik sarong and jacket, holding a sturdy leather bag. She introduces herself.

'Hallo Miss Maraleen. I am Ibu Liana, aunty of Bagus, by marriage. I taught him everything he knows. Any complaints, talk to me,' she jokes.

'Hello Ibu,' I say, standing to shake her hand. 'I have no complaints. He is very good at massage. You must be a good teacher.'

'Ya, I teach him well,' she chuckles.

'You feel a bit Bali belly?' she says touching my tummy tenderly. 'Let's see what we can do.'

She leads me into the bedroom, puts her bag down by the bed and tells me to take off all my clothes. I feel so comfortable with her, I do exactly as she says. She lays a sarong down on the bed and motions to me to lie down. From a bottle she pulls from her bag, she dabs a strong menthol oil on various parts of my body: my forehead and lips, my sternum, my navel, to either side of my groin, my thighs, the sides of my calves, my feet. Her touch is swift and familiar, almost rough. She doesn't bother with formality but touches me as if she knows me, kneading my skin as if it were here own. Then she stops for a moment with her hands on my abdomen and as if reading my body says, 'Why you do everything alone Maraleen? You don't have to do that way any more.'

She doesn't wait for an answer but keeps on massaging and talking.

'Digestion not good, you need take care. You have pain here? Don't eat read meat. You get headache sometime? Try my ginger tea. Putu can make for you.'

I surrender my soreness to her pummelling. She takes the pain in my body and squeezes it out of existence, touches it until it is gone. When she is finished she sits on the side of the bed resting one hand on my belly, the other on my knee, and tells me how she likes to get out of the house every day and travel around. Her family complain about it but she doesn't like to stay in and just like me she doesn't always tell them where she is going. Some days she goes all the way to the top of the island and stays overnight in her small house there.

'Would you like to come?' she invites me. 'We could go tonight,' she tempts with her gentle voice.

I feel I could easily go anywhere with this woman and I entertain the thought of escaping with her. Not telling Bagus or Putu, just packing my bag and disappearing again with my fellow escapee. But my condition makes me more cautious than normal.

'Perhaps another time,' I say, 'when I'm feeling a bit better.'

'Any time you want to go just call me on my hand phone,' she says. She scribbles her number down on a piece of paper and leaves it next to bed.

'Just relax now,' she whispers as she packs her bottles and towels into her bag. Again, I do as she says, and fall into a dreamless sleep.

It's already dark when I wake, and quiet but for the tok tok tok of wood on wood coming from somewhere nearby.

I sit up and feel around for the lamp switch. My illness is completely gone. I feel fresh and relaxed. I dress and go down to the compound to let them know I am feeling better.

Nyoman is the only one I can find. He is sitting on the tiles of the centre platform, watching TV.

'Where is everyone?' I ask.

'At the temple.'

'Oh,' I shuffle. 'Will they be back soon?'

'Don't know. Could go on all night.'

I turn to leave and Nyoman, sensing my aimlessness, asks,

'You want to go out? Ride around? Maybe we can find a dance performance for you to watch.'

'Yes, that would be nice,' I reply, relieved to have something to do. 'I'll go and get my bag.'

24

The air on my face feels cool and sweet as we speed into the night. I hold onto Nyoman's small waist as he overtakes the other motorbikes and cars in an unspoken system of signalling and road etiquette that I would never attempt. As we drive towards the centre of town, night-life is in full swing all around us. Restaurants open to the street are crowded with tourists of all shapes, sizes, ages, accents, trying to decide if they will have spicy Balinese again or dumb down to pizza, their gorgeous waiters and waitresses waiting on their decisions with skilled patience. Gamelan music surges over walls of temples where dramatic dance performances have audiences gripping the edges of their plastic chairs. Drivers loll about looking for customers and groups of young men gather on corners, sitting on their motorbikes to talk. The mongrel dogs that guard every doorway look more animated now than in the heat of the day, as night brings to them a special responsibility to be vigilant and alert.

When we arrive at the entrance to the temple grounds the performance is already under way. The seats and standing room are full so they are not letting anyone else in, but I can see enough from outside to catch an impression. The famous sonorous chant, coming from the lungs of a hundred bare-chested men, is all around us. 'Ke chak chak chak chak chak a chak a chak a chak a chak a chak.' They sit cross-legged in a wide circle, swaying in rhythm to their song; black and white check sarongs, red hibiscus flowers tucked behind their ears, bodies of all shapes and ages.

Nyoman gives his commentary.

'It is a traditional dance that was modified when tourists first started coming to Bali in the twenties and thirties. It hasn't changed much since then, and traditionally all the men of the local village take part — rice farmers, tradesmen, craftsmen, artists, drivers, cooks, masseurs, tour guides, kitchen hands, truck drivers, labourers, clerks and all the professions of modern Bali.'

He explains that the actors and dancers in the centre of the sea of men, dressed in spectacular costumes, are telling the story of Prince Rama, his wife Sita, and Hanoman, the White Monkey who, with the help of Garuda, rescues her from the demon king Rahwana.

'Are they professionals?' I ask.

'Most of them have day jobs,' he answers, 'but they have been training since a young age.'

'Can you dance like that?' I ask Nyoman.

'In my village last year, I took part in a traditional dance performance. We were men dancing as women.' He grins. 'I never did it before, but I know the dances from watching since we were kids.'

He starts to give a demonstration, moving his arms and legs in a rhythmic staccato movement with eye movements to match.

'Women dance like this,' he shows me. 'And men like this...'

'And like this,' says a young man, joining in, imitating Nyoman and laughing.

It's one of Nyoman's friends who has turned up with two others in tow. They must be in their twenties, only they look like they could be sixteen.

They introduce themselves — Gede, Komang, and Ketut. After all the 'Where are you from? When did you arrive? How long are you staying?' questions, we get talking about music. They love reggae, they proclaim, bursting into a medley of Bob Marley hits on the spot. When they find out I love Latin music they tell me, 'There is a really good Latin band playing tonight! Not far from here. You want to go there now?' they ask, 'Or we can go to the reggae bar? It stays open late!'

Their enthusiasm is contagious. We pile onto motorbikes, Nyoman and I on his, and the three of them on another.

How old am I? I ask myself, as we speed off calling out to each other, charging over bumps and around corners, dodging dogs and stray cats. Who cares? I answer, nobody here seems to.

When we arrive at the Latin bar I can see that most of the westerners on the dance floor don't care either. Whatever age they happen to be, they are living out their youth all over again as they flail and gyrate about the floor. There are big bosomed, middle-aged European women shaking their bootie and elderly couples tangoing cheek to cheek. Brenda and Cheryl, my fellow passengers from the plane, in glittering, evening-wear pashminas, are salsa-ing perfectly with handsome young Balinese dance partners. Tall, blonde, body beautiful types dance alongside halter-necked, bare backed, rainbow nymphs, next to single white mini-skirted bar chicks and Balinese cowboys with jet black hair down to their waists, thin stovepipe legs and giant belt buckles holding them together. At a table at the edge of the dance floor a dignified grey-haired woman in her sixties sits surrounded by several gorgeous Balinese men — maybe her driver, her cook, her gardener, her lover — who's asking? It's a good life — whatever the arrangement, I think to myself, as I lead my new friends to a table and offer to buy drinks. They all say no politely but when I insist they agree to have just one.

'The band is excellent,' I shout over the music to Nyoman. 'Are they South American?'

'No, all Balinese,' he replies.

'But their accents are impeccable,' I yell.

'Balinese can imitate anything,' he yells back.

It's true, I think, looking over at his baseball hatted, basketball  T-shirted friends.

'But your own culture stays intact. How come?' I ask.

'We are Balinese,' he laughs, 'How can we be anything else?'

By the time I order and devour a snack and we finish our beers, Nyoman and his friends are looking a bit bored. I love the music here but there's no room on the dance floor, so I suggest we move to the reggae club. We head off on the bikes again to another street nearby.

This club, open to the street like the other, has dark lighting and dreadlocked rasta-clad DJs who keep the reggae pumping through big speakers out onto the shadowy dance floor. There are more young Balinese men here, and young tourist girls, German, Dutch and French, Japanese, a few Aussies, by the sound of their accents. I buy another round of beers and tease the boys about tourist girls.

'Maybe you can get lucky tonight,' I say.

'Lucky never lasts,' Gede replies. 'Foreign girls break your heart. They say they are in love with you and will invite you to their country, but I am still waiting for the invitation!'

The others laugh, taunting him playfully.

'Oooh, still waiting for your Monica, Monica,' they tease.

He plays along, although it's clear Monica has left her mark.

'Would you marry a foreign girl?' I ask.

'No,' he says. 'Too difficult. I'm looking for a good Balinese girl, but not yet! Now I want my freedom.'

He pulls me up onto the dance floor. The others follow. We stay out there for ages, coming back to our seats to collapse for a drink and heading out for more. I haven't danced, really danced like this for years; moving past the point of stiffness and self-consciousness where with all the other dancing bodies, you melt into one moving organism with the same backbone of reggae rhythm and movement.

The crowd has thinned out by the time Nyoman suggests politely, perhaps we should go home. I apologise for keeping him out so late and say goodbye to his friends, promising to stay in touch.

We ride off through the streets, empty now except for the dogs organising themselves into random packs and half-heartedly attacking our wheels as we roll past. Their snarls and growls look sinister but Nyoman expertly kicks his feet at them and gathers speed, leaving them behind in the middle of the road to grumble and scavenge from offerings left out for the evil spirits.

'They're bad souls,' Nyoman yells over the motorbike din, 'reborn as dogs.'

'Aah,' I yell back, 'so that's why no one cares for them.'

25

When we get back to the compound Bagus is out the front hosing some plants, still dressed in his temple whites. He looks relieved to see us. We get off the bike and he talks harshly to Nyoman. Nyoman defends himself, then bows his head and when Bagus is finished, he wheels the bike inside the compound. Bagus goes on watering, not looking at me.

'I was worried,' he says. 'I went to find you in your room but you weren't there. You must be feeling better?'

'Yes I am completely recovered thank you. I think it was Ibu Liana's massage.'

'That's good,' he says, fiddling with his plants.

I start to go inside.

'Where did you go?' Bagus demands directly.

I realise he is angry with me.

'Nyoman took me to the _kecak_ dance. Then we went to some dance clubs. I'm sorry if you were worried.'

Bagus picks up his hose and walks through the compound gates. I follow.

'I'm glad you were with Nyoman. Some people out there you can't trust,' he says gruffly.

He puts the hose away. The rest of the compound is deserted. Everyone must be asleep. I'm sure he doesn't normally hose at one o'clock in the morning. I start to make my way in the direction of my room. His tone changes as he asks, 'So you want to come on a trip tomorrow? We will take a group from one of the hotels to the mother temple, Pura Besakih, on Gunung Agung, but we have to leave early — 7am.'

'Okay,' I reply. 'That would be nice.'

I start to make my way again.

'When do you leave?' he asks with an edge of urgency.

'Day after tomorrow,' I answer.

'Too soon,' he mumbles.

'Yes, I agree, but I have to get back to my kids. They don't...' I stop myself. 'They don't like it when I go away for too long.'

'You will have to bring them with you next time. We will look after them, take them around, show them everything.'

'Yes I will, I definitely want them to meet you and your family,' I say.

'I am sorry I haven't had more time to take you places,' he says, finally looking at me directly.

'That's okay, Bagus, I understand.'

'But tomorrow we make up for it, ya?'

'Ya,' I agree. 'See you in the morning.'

' _Selamat tidur_ Marilyn,' he replies, giving me a smile.

'Sweet dream.'

26

I am jammed in the back of a van full of European tourists; mostly German and Dutch I think, from their accents, and an elderly American foursome. We are driving in tandem with Bagus's friend Gusti, who has a van full as well. The whole group is staying at their friend's hotel, somewhere out of Ubud. Bagus wanted me to sit up front with him but one of the American ladies asked, 'Errre thayrr mainy beands Bagoooz? Ah hoape naatt, becaz othor waize itz nat gonna bay plaizunt fer anywan elzz oonlaiss I raide erp frunt.'

I give up my seat and squeeze in the back between two large middle-aged German women. They spend the trip peeling and passing fruit to one another, discussing, as they do, the skin, the taste, colour, the pips and the juice of each exotic specimen. After about half an hour it occurs to them to ask me if I would like a piece and when I say no thank you, they continue on as before, not noticing the sticky drips that fall on my book as I try to read. In the end I suggest I move so they can sit together and so ensues the funniest manoeuvre that any back of a bus has witnessed — me trying to climb over the fat lap of a woman three times my size with her friend pushing my rear so I can squeeze through the gap between her breasts and the seat in front. It looks like a bizarre lederhosen three-way and when I finally fall into my tiny spot it occurs to me that these _Frauen_ , who must be in their sixties, are not only food lovers but lifelong lovers of each other as well. It must be obvious to them from my scrawny build that I don't have a lifelong lover and I imagine they are looking at me now and discussing how they can fatten me up and invite me into their lederhosen world.

I hear myself explaining to them, 'Really, I am okay and thank you for your concern but in fact it is not as dire as it appears. I have many lovers! They share my bed with me every night! They take up so much room they push me out, fighting each other for my attention. Sometimes they lose out and fall off the bed with a crash. No one cares to pick them up till morning and so they lie there spread-eagled and open to the cold hard night of the floor.

The lucky ones still left, push their hard corners into me and crowd me in, encroach on my dreams, seducing me with words and language, sentences long and poetic or short and succinct, telling me stories, painting brilliant pictures and challenging me with all sorts of ideas and notions. But it's my lovers' scent I love the most: the musty dusty yellowing perfume of my old favourites or the clear crisp smell of fresh ink on new pages, begging to be touched, sniffed, opened, tasted, bent, dog-eared, smeared in food, rubbed in sand and scraped across the grass. Like this one, fresh and new, only joined us yesterday, now covered in sticky fruity stuff. Another is worn and tatty from overuse. Another is wise. One takes herself far too seriously. Yes, I don't mind what gender my lovers are, or what class. One is helping me get to the top! One is helping me get what I want, if only I can want it when I get it. Another is a Buddhist nun. She tells me how to go to the places that scare me. And this month's winner can do anything he wants with me. All night he lies faithfully by my side, nudging my dreams, waiting to thrill me at first light with his poetic murmurings.'

But the Frauen don't hear me. Besides they can't understand my accent and luckily for me their attention is out the window 'oohing' and 'aahing' at the imposing shape of Mount Agung's cloud-free slopes as it comes into view.

27

In the car park Bagus and Gusti are involved in intense negotiations with some tough looking guys whose ceremonial attire, like their attitude, looks like it needs a little attention. The local guides, they told us, have a reputation for bullying tourists and drivers into paying more than they should to view the temple. Bagus and Gusti sort it all out and agree to the local guide leading for a collective fee while they still accompany us. They explain to the older, larger, members of the group that they can pay local riders a couple of dollars to drive them the five hundred metres up the hill to the temple entrance.

We begin the walk up the vendor-lined road, past the same lines of cheap sarongs and souvenirs you see everywhere. At intervals in between, fruit sellers sit behind high pyramids of fresh _rambutan_ , oranges and a small brown fruit with armadillo skin. The bike riders follow us like sharks, revving their bikes annoyingly until some of the older members avail themselves of their service. The rest of us stride up the hill.

I walk with Bagus and Gusti and find out they have been friends since primary school.

'So you know each other well,' I comment.

'Too well,' says Gusti. 'If Bagus is in trouble I know it straight away. He doesn't even have to tell me.'

He takes Bagus's hand and swings it affectionately as if they were ten years old again. He is taller than Bagus and a little younger looking but his smile is just as big.

'All his secrets are my secrets,' he tells me. 'When we were young we would share everything,' he giggles, 'even girlfriends.'

'Until we got married,' Bagus adds. 'When I got married, Gusti got married a month later.'

'To Putu's sister?' I joke.

'Nooo, cousin,' Gusti replies laughing.

'Really!' I exclaim. 'Noooo!'

'Ya, he met her at my wedding,' laughs Bagus, 'She was beautiful, like Putu.'

'Still is,' says Gusti, 'the love of my life.'

He puts his arm around Bagus's shoulder and says with a heartfelt smile, 'Thank you friend.'

They walk like that until we reach the top of the road. I fall back and buy a small bag of the armadillo fruit, peeling and tasting the tart sweetness of its triangular shaped sections.

The group assembles near the main temple entrance, looking like a fancy dress party gone wrong with Tahitian print sarongs held up with odd matching scarves and headdresses perched at odd angles on the men's heads. Somehow they don't manage to look as dashing as Bagus and Gusti in their gold-edged ceremonial whites. I have worn my kebaya and silk sarong again but I'm starting to feel very hot. I wonder how Balinese women manage to always look so cool and unruffled in this heat.

Our young local guide begins his spiel explaining how the gods of Balinese Hinduism represent the four elements; earth, water, wind, fire and how according to which clan they belong to, Balinese people pray in different temples within the compound.

'Balinese from all over the island come here to pray, especially during the annual ten-day festival when the whole temple is filled with people, music, offerings, flags and ceremonial decorations,' he explains.

He leads us up the stairs into the vast complex of tall thatched pagodas with its temple buildings and carved gateways stretching up the slope, and I imagine the place thronging with crowds of people in their ceremonial best as they come to pray at the mother of all temples. I would like to see that, I think, as I follow along at the back of the group. Maybe another time — I will have to consult the ceremony calendar if there is such a thing, before I plan my next trip.

We make our way slowly along the pathways, past different temples where small groups of people are praying or doing ceremony as the mountain towers above us like a huge guardian presence. It's hard going for some of the group, and while the young guide continues to give his explanations, Bagus and Gusti translate into Dutch and German and any other language that is needed. They know just as much if not more than the local guide and they skilfully field any questions without treading on his toes.

After an hour or so of walking and talking we arrive at a resting place near the top of the complex. Bagus and Gusti hand out bottles of water and snacks they buy from a vendor and we stay there for a while, sitting or browsing in the gallery shop nearby.

I sit on a bench and look out at the plains stretching all the way to the sea. It makes sense to call this the mother temple; from here you can feel her arms embracing the whole island as any mother does.

My mother, as tiny as she was, had arms that reached out to many people beyond us kids, even when her own joy for life had left her. When a mother gives up her will to live, it is a disaster for everyone, most of all the children she has brought into the world so full of hope. For a child can't understand why all the gifts you give, potions you bring, books you draw, flowers you pick, songs you sing, jokes you tell and cards you make, lie in an unopened pile by her bed.

And when one day as a young woman, you visit your mother in hospital after she attempts to take her life and without small talk or sweet motherly hellos, her first words are, 'Can't you find me something that works? Can't you get me out of this hell?'

The door of hope clangs shut on your heart with a heavy thud, and you try to jolly her along and convince her that things will get better, even when you know that all the years of electroshock therapy, whizz-bang new drugs, overseas holidays and specialist this and specialist that, are not going to work because nothing ever did, nothing ever could, nothing ever would, shift the dark place inside her and fill it with light again.

And so what does a daughter do? How can a daughter be happy when her mother is sad? How can she pretend everything is okay when the one who gave her life, has given up on her own?

She lies down beside her mother in her sadness bed, holds her arms tight around her neck as she did when she was young, and says, 'Don't worry Mummy. I will stay with you in your sadness bed. I won't be happy until you are.'

o-o-o

Gusti is busy in the gallery shop advising most of the others on price and quality and the history of Balinese painting. Bagus sits down on the bench beside me, the warmth of his leg touching mine for a brief second. We sit in silence for a while, until he points out the towns that lie in front of us, all the way to Kuta. The muted sounds of tourists and their guides rise from the pathways below and I feel the same sense of peace rising in me that I have felt with Bagus before. Is it the temple, I wonder, or is it him? The air around us feels so light you could almost float.

o-o-o

Gusti gathers us like school children to begin the walk back to the buses. But this one wants more time, this one wants to go a different way, another wants to stop and snack again and take photos from obscure vantage points. This bunch of sixty-somethings who have all had important roles as company directors, managers and professionals at the top of their fields, love playing the child to Bagus and Gusti's 'dad'. They milk it for all it's worth. Bagus and Gusti give up, telling them to meet back at the bus. They straggle into the car park an hour later with all their needs indulged.

28

On the way back we have been promised a river swim near a town called Sidemen, famous for its _ikat_ weaving. Those who don't want to swim can go on the weaving tour with a Sidemen guide — another mate in the drivers' and guides' network. Only a few of us, plus Bagus and Gusti, carry on to the river; that's me, the German Frauen and a fit and tanned, older Dutch couple.

As we leave the town the view opens out. We are in a wide valley of green terraces that ride like a skirt up the slopes of a tall mountain. Near the top, the pagoda silhouette of a temple is pressed into the sky. Gusti parks the van at the end of a road near some fields of corn and cabbages. A pathway winds down through the vegetable patch to some stairs below that will take us to a wide, shallow river tumbling over black volcanic rocks across the valley floor. Bagus and Gusti lead the way and when we get to the bottom, they point to some bushes downstream where we can get changed. They head modestly upstream to their own bamboo-clump change booth.

The river is about ten metres across and moves swiftly over rocks in parts then broadens out into a large swimming hole. The Frauen and I change into our swimming costumes behind the shrubs. They give us token coverage but there is no one around except a couple of farmers who grin at us from across the way. I have wrapped a casual sarong around my one piece but the Frauen are completely at ease in their busty bikinis as we walk a little further to a small beach. The Dutch couple follow, their toned and fit bodies well accentuated in sensible navy and red Speedos.

We dump our things on the stone beach and wade into the cold water. Bagus and Gusti are sunning themselves on the rocks upstream. They wave and grin, beckoning us to join them. We wave back, signalling for them to join us instead. They grin and wave some more, then get into the water, letting the current carry them towards us.

Soon we are like a group of happy whales and fish floating about in the big pond. One of the Frauen swims back to the beach, produces a tennis ball and throws it into the middle of the pool. Gusti goes after it. The other Frau tackles him and the game is on — Keeping's Off — Tourists versus Drivers. The quiet waterhole becomes a churning olympic pool as we all try out our water polo moves on each other. Fairly soon it's clear that the drivers are winning. There are only two of them, but they are small and agile and have the advantage of playing on home ground.

Bagus has the ball. I go after him. He glides around me like an alligator teasing, pushing the ball with his nose. I pounce and miss. He swims away. I follow splashing, the Frauen behind me. I catch up and launch myself towards him. We fall under the water in a mad wrestling clinch, breathless with laughter. When we surface one of the Frauen has the ball and is being pursued by Gusti.

For a moment that lasts no longer than a few seconds, Bagus and I stay tangled, our arms and legs wrapped around each other, letting the current drift us downstream, our eyes caught in a look as clear and soft as the water around us.

The others crash into us again and just like as kids, someone always ended up crying — the game is suddenly over because Gusti has hurt his shoulder.

'It's an old injury,' he says. 'Don't worry, I'll be okay.'

The Frauen, very concerned, escort him to the bank offering a professional sports massage. They are trained physiotherapists and used to work for one of the top football teams in Wiesbaden. That's where they met, they tell us. They sit him down on a rock and go to work. Bagus and I and the Dutch couple stand around, offering advice while Gusti is wondering which is more painful, the injury or the treatment. But it works, for soon he has full use of his arm again and we don't have to recruit a new driver.

Back in the van, we pick the others up and begin our return journey. Bagus and Gusti take us on the back roads so we can see the countryside where westerners rarely go, and as promised we don't see a single tourist on the way until we get back on a main road to stop at a smorgasbord restaurant for lunch. Three busloads of tourists are there already so we have to queue to pile our plates as high as we like with saté, nasi goreng, mie goreng, an array of chicken and fish curries, then go back later for watermelon, papaya and coconut sweets. The Frauen are in heaven, giving their usual running commentary to each other of every single taste they put in their mouths.

When we pile back into the van again and take our old seats, the American foursome are deep in detail comparing this smorgasbord restaurant with another on their Kintamani trip.

The Frauen are still discussing the ingredients and consistency of the green coconut sweets they have managed to smuggle out in a napkin. Their grating voices rise to an animated height. I am thankful for the barrier foreign language creates and float into my own little world.

I am back at the river, in a bubble of memory, in the moment I lunged at Bagus with no inhibition and we wrestled and fell, our mouths full of laughter and water and squeals, in an instant of total freedom, the kind grown-ups never get to have anymore, when you don't care where you fling your arms and legs or what kind of twisted heap you fall down in. And when we fell down together and drifted for those few seconds, melting into a weightless watery sea, I could feel the ground between us to be solid and true. But what to do? He has a wife and family. I have children back in a country so opposite to his in every way. There is so much about us that is different. I don't speak his language, he has a superficial grasp of mine. So how can it possibly feel so right?

Maybe it's not just Bagus, I think. Maybe it's the whole island that has been working its magic on me from the minute I walked through the airport doors into its warm scented air. As if every cell of my body had awoken from a long sleep, and my senses overloaded with observations, experiences, sensations that in the end all add up to one overriding impression — sensuality! Like I have arrived in a sensual heaven, a pure land where everyone is a god making offerings to other gods — of colour, scent, form, sound, taste, touch, and I want to ask Bagus, how can you live in this, just day to day? Is it sensual for you too or is it just ordinary and mundane and boring because it's what you know? How do you live with beauty all around you, everywhere you look, not only the physical beauty of almost every Balinese man, woman and child, but in everything you do: your art, your religion, the way you dress, smile, walk and talk, how you carry and care for your children, your physical ease with one another, men sitting with arms around each other, young girls holding hands, women carrying offerings to the temple with straight backs and slim figures, their smooth honey skin, flowers in their hair...

In my country sensuality is expensive, equated with luxury; you can have it if you pay for it. You will find it in top-end boutiques and five star hotels and exclusive restaurants and homeware stores where you can buy a Bali Buddha or carved Balinese doorway at exorbitant prices. Sensuality in our world is something special, not everyday, a once in a lifetime event or treat, like a holiday in Paradise or a gift voucher to a day spa.

Or else it is a forbidden, hidden joy that lives in an underworld of seedy massage parlours and brothels where girls with names like Chantelle and Jasmine give sensual oil massages with happy endings.

Maybe that's all it is, I think as we pull into the hotel to drop the guests off. It's sensory overload. Do the others feel it too? I wonder, as we all get out of the vans to say our goodbyes. Are their bodies tingling, turned on, all their chakras open? Will they rush to their hotel rooms and have wild passionate sex because how else can they find a way to express everything they have been experiencing in the last few days? I'm sure the German Frauen will, the Dutch couple also, and the elderly Americans? Well that wouldn't surprise me either.

We all shake hands and the Frauen hug me, pulling me into their big breasts, telling me if I am ever in Wiesbaden there is a bed waiting for me any time. Whose bed I wonder?

I watch them waddle their big strong bodies up the hotel steps, turning to wave as Bagus and I drive off. Maybe I will visit them one day. Who knows? Why not put it on my map of places I'd like to go to?

29

It's nice to finally be alone with Bagus although there is a tension between us that wasn't there before, like we both know we have crossed a line and are not sure what to do about it. So we ignore it, and talk about the guests one by one and their idiosyncratic behaviours.

Then I notice that instead of driving back towards Ubud we seem to be driving away from it again.

'Where are we going,' I ask Bagus.

'There is another temple I want you to see,' he says, 'not far from here.'

'Isn't it late, shouldn't we be getting back?' I say, as I don't know if I have the energy for any more sightseeing.

'No no, plenty of time, this is a special one.'

After winding around some back streets we arrive in a narrow road leading to temple gates at the bottom of a hill. Bagus parks the car on the side of the road, then decides to move it again. He sees a better spot off the street on a vacant lot where other cars are parked. He parks, then backs out and parks again. He seems a little on edge.

'Are you okay, Bagus?' I ask.

'Yes, yes, streets are too narrow, I don't want anyone to scrape the car,' he answers.

We get out and walk down the hill towards the gates. Before we get there Bagus turns into an entrance way. He motions to me to follow.

'There's a good view from here,' he explains.

An overweight woman with a slow walk and lazy gestures comes out to greet us. Bagus talks to her. She leads us through a small garden into a tiled corridor of doors with curtained windows looking in on each other. No temple view here, I think. Then I realise...

She opens the door to the room, gives Bagus the key and leaves. Her flip-flop walk fades away into silence. There is a double bed, no sheets, just a cover and lumpy pillow. A fan clicks away above us and there is a small bathroom off to the right. While the rest of the hotel seems deserted, stains on the walls tell us this room gets plenty of use.

Not knowing what else to do, I sit on the edge of the bed. Bagus surveys the room like a detective. He opens and closes the bathroom door as if checking its hinges, adjusts the curtains that guard the window looking out into the corridor and roams the perimeter of the room. Finally he lies down on the bed. His eyes are wide and active like an animal who knows the meadow is dangerous but still wants to taste the delicious grass. Then he opens his arms to me.

'Bagus, do you think we shoul... what abou... we don't have to...' But I don't even convince myself. He motions to me not to talk. I give up my feeble protest and lie down beside him.

The air in the room is hot and sticky, his body feels warm and comforting.

This is enough, I think. This is all I really want. Can I tell that to his wife?

'Putu, I just want to borrow your husband for a hug. Do you mind? I haven't had a good hug in a long while. Maybe we could come to some arrangement. I'll just live in the room out the back. I won't get in the way. I'll pay good rent and contribute to the bills. You can practice English with me. I can practice my Indonesian and Balinese with you. Just so long as Bagus can come and give me a hug every now and then, and look after me like he looks after all of you. What do you think?'

The rest of the small hotel is quiet except for a distant dog bark and bird call floating down the corridor. I listen to the sound of Bagus's breath and my own joining it in a counter rhythm. It feels as if all of time has slowed down and nothing exists but this breathing room.

I imagine what will happen next...

Bagus will take off his clothes. I will follow. We will lay them neatly at the end of the bed. His small boyish body will arouse me. His brown skin on mine will excite me and next to his, my skin will look so pale and I will think this is meant to be, this union of colours where one enhances the other, for opposites attract, this we all know and surely to make love to your opposite instead of making war, must be the answer to all our problems, and yet if all the opposites in the world made love we would end up with just a bland blend, and how dull and boring that would be, so maybe it is better that we keep this tension alive, just out of reach, always in the realm of the other, so we can forever fantasise what it might be like to touch brown skin, black skin, white skin, pink skin, yellow skin...

Bagus's touch will be firm and gentle and I won't care if it is long or quick but when he enters me I know I will cry and he will think he has hurt me and I won't be able to tell him right then that I am crying because I am happy to be with him in this way, even though what we are doing may be seen as bad or wrong, it is not the act that is wrong, just the circumstances surrounding it, for how could you say this thing which is so natural between a man and a woman could ever be bad, and yet it is the source of so much confusion and denial and repression and laws and religious rules and beliefs and attitudes and exploitation and punishment and misuse of power and violence and pain, when the act itself is nothing but an act of life that makes you feel like you are the earth again, after all that time lost in space, way out there in the separate world you created, the little prison you made for yourself... But now your prison walls are falling, the key has been snatched, your prison has been broken into and you feel the soil beneath you again, with worms and mulch and green shoots, exploding and swelling and growing in your dampness once more.

o-o-o

The rhythm of the fan has joined the rhythm of our breath, adding a little squeak each time it turns. Its air cools us as we breath together, our chests rising and falling into each other, catching the edges of our warmth and holding them close.

I try to imagine what Bagus might be thinking. I wonder if it is something like...

'Soon I will know what it is like to be inside her skin. This woman who lies with me now is not my wife, but what can you do when one day you see her sitting on her suitcase at the airport, a complete stranger, and you know, yes it is her, she is the one I have dreamed about, the one I have been waiting for.

And it would be so predictable if I was like other drivers always looking for a western girlfriend to boast to my friends about, only I have never been like that, it's just not me. And yes, I have wondered what it would be like to touch a white woman's skin, in all the long moments I have had to think about it as I waited for foreign women, picking them up at the airport, driving them all over the island, opening doors for them, serving drinks to their barely-clad bikini bodies by aqua swimming pools as they point their lobster breasts at me, bringing tea to their rooms as they lie naked in their beds vomiting and crying to go home, massaging every inch of their plump pink bodies on massage tables in the pavilion by the sea. Helping them in and out of my car, up stairs, into temples, up rocky mountain paths, rice paddy walks, as I listen to their husbands loudly proclaiming their knowledge of my culture, all cultures, all car makes, all computer systems and everything else he can possibly have an expert opinion on!

Of course I wonder what it would feel like. And since Marilyn has arrived I have been hard, day and night thinking of nothing else but what colour she is beneath the hidden folds of her skin. But now that she is beside me and I am holding her in my arms, and I want to go on touching her, I'm hesitating, for in my mind I already have. Every night, before I fall asleep next to my wife, I imagine going to her room, pushing open her door, silently walking to her bed and whispering her name. 'Marilyn, Marilyn.'

When she wakes up and looks at me with those sleepy smiling eyes, I reach out to play with her pink nipples while she moans a little and breathes hard and just when I think her happiness has come, she parts my sarong and finding me waiting and ready, she warms me with her lips and slowly and surely... she takes me to paradise... all the way.

And when she is finished she says, 'Bagus, go back to your wife. She is a good woman, you are lucky to have her, you don't want to upset her.' And I agree and she kisses my bare stomach goodnight and falls back to sleep in her bed.

When I get back to my wife she is sleeping so soundly and looks so beautiful that I know I still love her even when I love Marilyn as well, and although I knew if my wife ever found out, she could never understand and would make my life a living hell, I wish more than anything I could tell her my secret.'

A raucous William Tell overture bursts into the room. Bagus rummages for his phone and answers, trying to sound alert, for we had both dozed off, still fully clothed. He exchanges words rapidly with the caller then hangs up.

'It's Putu,' he says. 'It's okay, she doesn't suspect anything. I told her we just dropped the others off.'

Wives always know, I want to say, whether they realise it or not. Wives always home in on the act of sin.

I get up and go to the bathroom. I have a pee and splash my face with water. The moment has passed, I think, already gone, like at the river, drifted away on the current.

I am not going to sleep with another man's wife I decide, although technically that's exactly what I just did!

But we didn't do anything else, I hear myself defend. Wives don't make such distinctions, I remind myself. Just thinking about it is bad enough.

I call out as I walk back into the room.

'Bagus, I think we should go ba...'

Bagus is already standing near the door ready to go. He grins at me.

'I'm sorry Marilyn, bad idea.'

I smile back at him.

'Not at all, Bagus. That was the nicest nap I've ever had.'

30

We drive back through the late afternoon activity of the village: people walking to the river, towels over shoulders, men squatting by the road, children nestled between their legs, women leaning and chatting with neighbours and smoke from afternoon fires in the air.

What is the difference, I wonder, in having the pleasure and not having it? Is it like saying no to a delicious sweet you know will make you sick in five minutes time? If we had tasted it, it would be over now anyway, and we would be driving back, with just the memory. If you can imagine it, why do you need to have it? Isn't the imagining just as real, maybe more so? The same could be said from the wife's point of view. She will rail over an imagined scene, not one she was physically present at. In truth, the moment of sin has nothing to do with her.

It is the selfishness of infidelity, I think, that hurts more than the act itself. Two people caught up in feeling and sensation don't want to stop and think how their actions might affect another, so they find all sorts of ways to justify it to themselves and it all sounds very reasonable at the time, although you know it would never stand up to rigorous interrogation by the scorned third party, whose self-obsessed reactions may also turn out to have their own repercussions.

When I found out about my husband's first affair, my initial response was spontaneous and unpremeditated violence, a reaction I never expected to have, but little did I know, that was just the beginning of it. I had come home early from a weekend away at an old school reunion and found Bruce and his colleague Margaret, watching TV on the living room couch. That's strange, I thought, when I walked in and saw them sitting so close, but I knew they were good mates so didn't give it any more credence. They'd been working all weekend on a deadline and Bruce decided it was easier to work at home rather than get babysitters. When he said goodbye to Margaret at the front gate, again I thought, funny, they are hugging quite intimately for work mates, but still I didn't think anything of it, until later in bed, thinking he'd been sprung, Bruce told me they were having an affair, that it had been going on for some time, that it in no way threatened the love he had for me and the kids, that Margaret understood and was happy for him to put his family first above all else, and he knows it must be a shock but he wanted to tell me now before anybody else did.

My non verbal, involuntary response formed my hands into claws and plunged them into Bruce's chest dragging them in long lines down his pectoral muscles leaving deep scars that would have made Stelarc proud.

Bruce was as shocked as I was at my outburst, saying, 'For God's sake Marilyn, there's no need for violence. It's just an affair.' I didn't reply but took myself and some blankets into the spare room, closed the door and didn't speak to him for a week.

It turned out that they had often spent weekends 'working' at our place on my weekends away. Back after our first child was born and our relationship was feeling the strain, we had decided once a month, to give each other weekends off. I would visit my mother interstate or catch up with friends, or go to the shack and write. Bruce would go fishing or fossicking for precious stones with his mates out west. I'd wondered why there hadn't been any fishing photos for a while and not many fish or new rock specimens coming home in the esky.

At the end of my week of silence I was still angry and in an attempt to deal with it in a calm and sensible manner, I wrote a letter to Margaret and decided rather than post it, I would hand deliver it to the office. This was a stupid idea, for as I handed it to her in person I felt I had to say something. But the words didn't come out well formed and thought through like they were in the letter, but in a wounded cow, betrayed fishwife, catcalling, football hooligan manner, and soon I was being escorted out of the building by security and banned from coming there ever again. But that didn't stop me finding many more ways to play the betrayed wife: slashing tires, screaming into public phones, driving backwards and forwards over Bruce's prized fishing equipment, stalking and bursting into love nest motel rooms, and boring my friends silly with latest updates of the sad drama. And while it may have been satisfying at the time to vent my wounded pride on people and places and things, I wish someone had told me that it was not a good look and saved me all that carry on.

For as I discovered, to blame someone else for your unhappiness, even when it looks like, feels like, sounds like, they are the cause, has to be the most disempowering act there is.

Stalwart wives of philanderers learned this long ago as they ignored their husband's silly behaviours and got on with their life's work, receiving society's respect and admiration. Long suffering whingeing wives of ladies' men, however, took their bitterness to the grave, never forgiving those who injured them. Others like me ping-ponged back and forth finally choosing freedom and its sobering reality.

Were the years I wasted wallowing in self-pity really necessary, I wonder now? Couldn't there have been a quicker way to learn the lesson it seemed I had to learn — that as long as I held onto the pain of betrayal, the person I was betraying was myself.

31

Bagus drops me in town. I say I want to do some souvenir shopping. It's true, but also I don't want to go back to my room right now.

There's also another ceremony procession happening further ahead. I get out so Bagus can take a side street and skip the traffic jam. I watch the bright spectacle as it passes, then I wander in and out of small shops buying extra odds and ends, like bamboo chopsticks, cane coasters, wooden masks and leather shadow puppets — all the typical tourist gifts. I almost buy a tall carved cat for a cat lover friend but stop myself just in time.

Night has fallen while I have been wandering and I find a small Japanese restaurant to have dinner in. The waitress, a mature Balinese woman dressed in Japanese kimono, shows me to a low wooden table beside a large window looking out onto the street. The restaurant is surprisingly empty except for an overweight, grey-ponytailed man at the table next to me and a couple of giggly Japanese girls at the back.

I order the combination sushi/sashimi box. It's starting to rain, the colours of the street running along the gutters and into the drains underneath the footpath. Motorbike riders magically produce plastic ponchos and walkers pull out big umbrellas from nowhere.

I eat my sushi, drink my miso soup and wonder what the kids are doing right now — watching DVDs, joking around, arguing over who is going to do the dishes, whose turn it is to take the overdue videos back to the video store and pay the late fine, and who has to do the next chocolate bar run to the corner shop.

A thick Jack Nicholson drawl from the ponytail at the next table interrupts my thoughts, with a question I can only assume is directed at me,

'Got yourself a Balinese gigolo yet?' He doesn't wait for an answer. 'No? That's surprising,' he sneers into his beer.

'There's plenty out there — all waitin' to snap you up.'

Now I'm not sure he is directing his comments to me — he seems to be looking straight past me out to the street. Nevertheless he continues on.

'Even as old as you are darlin'. You can take your pick. You like 'em young? You can have a nice handsome young one by yer side if you want. All you have to do is click your fingers.'

He makes the motion of clicking but can't quite get it to work.

'Don't worry that they may be married already,' he laughs. 'Who knows? Some of them may have two wives or even three. It's okay, you'll be number one for a while at least, until he gets tired of you and starts looking for another. Or maybe he already has a regular girl down at the _cewek_ café. Yeah, we all end up down at the cewek café sooner or later.'

He pauses to eat and drink and while I am still working out what I can possibly say back to him, he repeats his drunkards chant,

'Have you got yourself a gigolo yet?'

Then he laughs.

'I haven't met a single Balinese that wasn't a gigolo. They all want something from ya in the end. Don't worry, they'll ask you sooner or later, in the nicest way. Paradise ain't cheap no more, no siree.'

I realise by now he is talking to me but he doesn't require me to participate at all so I continue to eat my meal and listen and nod and mutter 'mmm' occasionally to save us both embarrassment.

'When I first came here, paradise was dirt cheap, people were happy with their simple lives. Now they all want big four-wheel drives and fridges and computers and why shouldn't they have it all? And they see you a comin' a mile off and they think she's the one that's gonna help me get it. If I just play my cards right I can get outta here and set myself up in the west 'cos that's the paradise I'm dreamin of.'

He punctuates his speech with an attempt to look me straight in the eye.

'So if yer don't have money or yer no good at business you better tell 'em now. They won't believe you of course. They think back in the west we shit gold and wipe our arses with greenbacks.' He snorts into his beer.

'But I'm telling you now if you're entertaining a little fantasy of running away from yer life back home and setting up here with a brand new man who is so much more charmin' than you remember men to be... You better make sure you bring the money honey, 'cos the only mixed marriages that work here are the ones that bring in the dollar. Paradise, you see, is all about economics I'm afraid.'

He pauses, staring into his mug of beer as if it will give him his next burst of inspiration.

An attractive Balinese woman in her forties walks towards us from the kitchen, a parka over her cooks' uniform and two helmets in her hand. He looks up from his beer.

'Ah, look, here comes my dear wife,' he says softly. 'Don't be fooled by the look of Balinese women, darlin'. They are strong as the oxen that plough their fields. She's the only one looking after me now. Her family kicked us both out after I went bust after that bastard bomb. Can you believe that? But she wouldn't leave me, no sirree.'

His wife reaches the table and stands behind him, resting her arm affectionately on his shoulder.

'This is my wife Komang,' he says proudly. 'She's my boss in every way. I'm Ted by the way. I'm sorry I forgot yer name.'

'Marilyn,' I reply, aware that this is the first time he has actually left room for my response.

'That's right, you look like a Marilyn,' he joshes. 'Where you from darlin'?'

'Australia,' I answer.

'Oh an Ozzzie. You'll do fine here. Don't believe anythin' I said. I was just pullin' yer leg cos I know you Ozzies like that. And home ain't so far away, is it, if you start missing yer gum trees.'

He turns his eyes towards his wife, who is wiping bubbles of sweat from his forehead with a napkin.

'We ready to go sweetheart? I'm feelin' a bit tired.'

He stands up with a great deal of effort and Komang helps him with his jacket.

'Isn't she a sweetie, says she loves me. Can you believe it? Who could love an old bastard like me? But that's the Balinese for you.'

Ted puts out his hand. I grasp it in mine and shake. It feels thin and cold.

'You take care now little Ozzie. Hati-hati, ya. If you ever get lonely for a chat you know where to find me.'

I nod and say goodbye, good luck and all that but I needn't have bothered. He is already on Komang's arm shuffling out the door and across the road to her parked motorbike.

I watch as she turns her bike around and helps him straddle the pillion. It's not an easy manoeuvre for him but finally he is on and they drive off slowly, his old man arms hugging her waist, his whiskery cheek resting on her shoulder. Then suddenly remembering me, he gives a jerky wave and a smile in my direction. I start to wave back but they are gone.

I ask for my bill and thanking the waitress for the meal, pick up my bags and walk out into the light rain. Across the street a group of drivers leap to their feet, miming a steering wheel action and offering their services. I smile and nod, letting them work out between themselves who is going to drive me home.

32

When I get back to the compound, there is no one around. Maybe they are at the temple again. I am relieved because of course I am feeling guilty about what happened with Bagus and I am not sure what I will do when I see Putu. Will I blush or blabber on incessantly about nothing or just avoid her gaze? None of the above I decide. I'm a grown adult. Surely I can take responsibility for my actions, and if I have to, I will give the best explanation I can. I have plenty of experience to draw on, only never before from this perspective. My marriage wasn't the first relationship to invite someone else in. In my previous relationships, there was always seemed to be another lurking — an old flame, an ex or a 'grass is greener' fantasy.

When the first few years of marriage with Bruce was blissfully 'other woman' free, I thought I had finally foiled the triangle curse. Not to be, it seemed. There it was again and the harder I pushed and struggled against its pointy dagger shape, the tighter its three-sided clinch became.

When I stepped out of the marriage for the final time, the triangle we had been locked in for years, fell apart within weeks. Margaret, who had committed her life to Bruce come hell or high water, had a brief honeymoon period alone with him before working out that a new woman was on the horizon. Realising she had taken my place in the triangle, she was out of there like a shot. She left Bruce and found a new man within days. Bruce went on to have a monogamous relationship with his next lover for a couple of years at least, something I could never come to terms with. Why couldn't he have had that with me, I moaned, but deep down I knew, and mathematically it is obvious. A triangle needs three sides to hold it together and I had played my part.

And now here I am in a new one. Well, I'm not really in it, not any more. But maybe I could try the mistress position for a while I think as I undress and get into bed. Perhaps I can gain some new insights from her point of view, though I can't see it is so different to the wife's. You might have more freedom and independence, and you get to avoid the mundane side of the relationship, but you still compete with wife for second best. She thinks she is, and you think you are, always number two. But Husband doesn't think in ones and twos. That's the problem, although it's not a problem for him. Maybe it's his position I should take. Maybe I should take more than one lover, the more the better, and just play the field, promise nothing to any one, enjoy them all, all colours, ages, shapes, sizes, temperaments, because there has to be an alternative for women of my age, to the deadly Prince Charming myth. We can't still be hoping for the white knight to sweep us off our feet after all these years. It is not only ridiculous but ludicrous. When will little girls ever learn — not until we are little old ladies?

o-o-o

There is a knock at my door. I hear Bagus's voice calling softly, 'Marilyn, Marilyn are you awake?'

It's quite late, I wasn't expecting a visitor. I get out of bed and open the door. Bagus is standing there in his house sarong, looking sheepish. My sarong is thrown around my body at an odd angle.

'Bagus!' I exclaim, then not knowing what else to say, 'Selamat malam.'

Bagus comes into the room. We stand looking at each other awkwardly. Then he speaks.

'I want to say goodbye to you... alone... because tomorrow we may not be able to... like this...'

'That's nice of you,' I say, not quite sure what he means.

'Is Putu...?' I begin...

'She is still at the temple. She will be busy for a while. She didn't say anything. It's okay.'

I stand in front of Bagus adjusting my sarong so it won't fall off, not sure whether to ask him to sit, offer him a drink of water or what to say, but he continues on,

'I want you to know Marilyn that I haven't done this before. I have never been unfaithful to Putu. I am not that kind of man. But with you...'

He hesitates and reaches out, drawing me close,

'... it feels like glue... feels like we stick together.'

We are indeed now stuck together for if we move another inch my sarong will fall off. We stand in one of those hugs you wish could go on forever and it's because you know it can't that it feels so intense — with every particle of you vibrating in some kind of exhilarating dance, like electro-laser crackles on high beam.

As to what happens next, what do you think? Should passion and desire win out, or should morals and rational thinking stand firm? Does Marilyn's sarong fall to the floor? Does she undo Bagus's sarong so it falls with hers, their naked skin finally touching in a sensation as delicate and exquisite as the batik patterns burying their feet? Do they collapse onto the bed still 'stuck together', as Bagus described it, unable to feel any longer where his body begins and hers ends, because now they are one feeling, one sensation and any which way they move, anything they do to each other feels like one thing, not two, not separate like 'he is doing this to me now,' or 'mm that feels nice I wish she would do more,' but one flow, one action, one direction, leading only to one goal — to find the place of joining inside each other's skin.

And does Marilyn reach out for the condom she happens to have under the pillow in case such a scenario arose or does she throw caution to the wind and think it's okay just this once, to feel his skin inside her skin, to let him turn her inside out and her outside in, to take this man into her dark, damp cave and surround him with a sea of softness so spacious and vast, he thinks he may never return. And when the bliss of weightlessness begins to engulf them and they are about to cry out in their joy, she thinks and he thinks, whatever I have to suffer to have this feeling is worth it, and I will do it all again. And when the moment of abandon bursts through them like a river, first from him into her, then from her over him and their essence mixes and spills from their skin onto the bed, is it only then that they realise what they have done?

Or... do they finish their standing hug, say goodbye, shake hands, kiss cheek to cheek, when Bagus says,

'When I drive you to the airport tomorrow maybe we will have time for dinner at Jimbaran Bay, and that can be our final farewell.'

Marilyn thinks this is a good idea and is relieved that her sarong didn't fall off and that although the hug was charged with feeling, she is proud they resisted falling into each other again. And she hopes that if Putu knew how much willpower they were both using for her sake, she would be impressed.

o-o-o

Bagus leaves my room as quietly as he arrived. I watch him walk down the path back to his family, the plinking and plonking of frogs and insects following him all the way.

33

I wake late. When I get out of the shower Putu is already bringing my breakfast up the path on a tray. That's nice, I think. Usually she sends Wayan. Maybe because it's my last day.

'Paageeee Maraleen, apa kabar?'

'Baik-baik,' I answer, 'Thank you, Putu.'

'Tidur _nginyak_?'

'Pardon?' I ask.

'Sleep well?' Putu translates.

'Ya, terima kasih,' I reply.

She puts my tray down on the balcony table.

'Enjoy, Maraleen,' she says as she leaves again. She seems to be in a very good mood. Bagus was right. She didn't suspect anything. What a relief! I would hate to make a problem between her and Bagus — or her and me, for that matter.

I sit down to eat my breakfast taking in the view as I have done every morning. I don't know which is more delicious.

This morning the tea is piping hot as usual but the fruit salad isn't as nice. The melon is tasteless, the papaya sour, and the banana is completely wooden. Oh well, I think, cook must be having a bad day. But the pancakes will make up for it. I cut a big slice of pancake and pop it in my mouth. I spit it out straight away. It's completely inedible, as if a whole tin of salt has been poured into it. And I know immediately, the cook is Putu.

I push my breakfast away and drink my tea, staring out at the rice paddies. A cloud moves across the sky dulling the green to grey. Before I have time to think what I might do or say, Putu is back again, as friendly as ever. When she sees I haven't eaten anything, she says with a big smile,

'Not hungry Maraleen?'

I play along and smile back.

'Not really Putu. I'm sorry, I had a big dinner last night.'

'No worries, Maraleen. Anything else I get you?'

'No, thanks Putu, I have to pack.'

'Oh ya, we sorry you leave so soon. Maybe you come back one day with husband and kids?'

'Yes, Putu, I think we will. They would love it here.'

She picks up the tray and begins to leave.

'Oh, Maraleen, Bagus says very sorry he not drive you to airport. He already busy today. Many things to do. He ask Gusti take you.'

'Oh...' I say, trying to hide my disappointment. 'That's okay.'

'Your bill ready for pay any time before leave. Gusti will get you four o'clock.'

'Okay, Putu, thank you.'

Putu smiles and leaves. I smile back wanly.

Match point and set to Putu! She is so much better at this game than me. I watch her walk down the path imagining a skip in her step.

34

I pack and tidy up my room. I'm hungry but it feels good. I've been eating so well for days it doesn't hurt to feel empty. I make another cup of tea from the thermos, and sit down in my chair on the balcony. I sit very still for a long time watching everything in view: red ants hurrying along the balcony ledge, a bird diving in the sky, scissor finger palm leaves bending in the wind, a single leaf falling to the ground, a white crane lifting its leg in the rice field. How can I begin to describe everything I have experienced here?

I reach out for my notebook and pen and start to write. I don't stop, except to pee and drink water, until I hear Putu calling me hours later.

'Maraleen, Maraleen, Gusti here.'

I finish my sentence and put my book and pen away in my bag. I look about the room making sure I haven't left anything behind. I walk out onto the balcony one last time then pick up my suitcase and walk out the door closing it behind me. I descend the stairs and trundle down the path to the family compound.

Gusti is sitting in the shade waiting for me. When he sees me coming he rises to greet me and takes my bag. My suitcase is expanded to its full extension with all the sarongs and weavings and random gifts I have bought. He takes it to the car.

Putu comes out of the kitchen and presents me with my bill. Every meal, bottle of water, day trip, night's stay, massage, and anything extra I asked for is neatly itemised and totalled. It works out at about sixty dollars a day, which is still cheap. I am happy to pay it and I don't know why I am surprised to be getting a bill. I didn't really think I was their house-guest did I? And yet I felt so comfortable here I seemed to forget there would be a commercial transaction at the end of it all. I hand over the money and shake Putu's hand.

I have a small gift for her. It's a silk scarf with Australian wattle printed on it that I picked up in Duty Free. I was going to give it to my mother but I can get another one on the way back. Putu is very happy to receive it. She goes into the room behind and comes back with two ugly orange polyester T-shirts with 'Bagus Spa' embroidered across the back.

She hands them to me.

'For you and husband to wear, tell all your friends about us. And maybe Maraleen...' she adds, 'you want become business partner with us, and we finish other rooms. You know someone who make brochure and website for us?'

She hands me a card.

'This our email address. We send you business plan. Or if not you,' she says casually, 'then maybe you find other investors for us. What you think Maraleen?'

She gives me her most charming smile.

I am a little taken aback. Putu is moving too fast for me. A few hours ago I was wondering how I was going to extricate myself from a potentially ugly situation, now I am being invited to become her business partner! On the other hand it does sound attractive. I'm sure I could rustle up some friends eager to put a few grand each in a time share investment and then I really could come for part of the year and live in the room out the back. Could I? It's too confusing.

'I will think about it Putu,' is all I can say. 'Thank you for everything. Please tell Bagus goodbye from me.'

'Of course,' Putu smiles warmly.

The other members of the family have gathered to farewell me as well. I go around one by one and shake their hands: the old man who is Bagus's father, Bagus's mother — the plump grey-haired woman who always puts out the offerings, the very old aunty who picks the high frangipani, the young woman with the intense eyes — Bagus's sister who is deaf and dumb, Wayan and her child, whose husband is away working, Bagus's three kids aged nine, seven, and five — two boys and a girl — Nyoman, and a few more I can't account for, all wish me 'selamat jalan' — have a safe journey.

Putu takes my arm and we walk through the gate to the van. I get in the front seat and buckle up, waving back at her as we drive off.

'Phew,' I exclaim.

Gusti responds.

'Putu is a clever woman ya, just like my wife. Always one step ahead.'

'Ya, she sure is,' I agree. 'Too clever for me.'

35

We drive out into the rice fields, following alongside their companion waterways — small channels that feed into larger ones that divide again into rivulets to feed the paddies and spread the water across the terraces. In and out of villages and towns they flow, under every street and road and walkway and out again into the countryside gathering pace and joining with rivers and canals and dividing once more into the patchwork puzzle of mud walled lots and fields. And always the friendly bubbling and gurgling carrying you along so it feels like the whole island is alive with a liquid green so fertile, you think you can see the rice shoots growing as you watch, and if you came back in the morning it would already be time to harvest.

It all seems so healthy and natural, you don't want to think that Balinese farmers would have moved with the times like everyone else, so now there are pesticides and phosphates and genetically modified seed and plastic and bottles and all the nasties of modern pollution bubbling and gurgling along as well, because that is not part of the deal. Paradise in not supposed to be polluted, but pure and pristine; the one place you can always return to when everywhere else is ruined.

But we tourists don't have to think about that, I remind myself as we descend the hill into the leafy green forest with the bridge at the bottom and climb up the other side to cross the invisible border that separates Ubud from the rest of the island. Now it feels like we are leaving the magical kingdom behind and are driving back down to the hardnosed plains of real life, of business deals, rip-offs and commercialdom. It's just my speculation of course but somehow the air in Ubud feels clear and sweet, as if all the artistry that goes on there rubs off on everyone, even those who don't have a creative calling.

'You like Ubud?' Gusti says.

'Yes, very much,' I answer. 'It makes me feel happy.

'So you think you will come back?' he asks.

'I hope so,' I answer.

That's the best I can do conversation wise and I hope Gusti doesn't mind but it feels like I am on rewind, playing backwards all the places I passed on that first drive in with Bagus. I wish it was Bagus who was driving me, not Gusti and I wonder what he is doing now. Is he thinking about me while I am thinking about him? Is he drifting into a dream of us when he gets a spare minute or is Putu keeping him so busy he doesn't have time?

The dream is over I tell myself, before it's begun, but somehow I don't feel bereft. I feel alive and excited, like every part of me is zinging in the same way it was when I stood saying goodbye to Bagus in my room, only now instead of him, I am embracing particles of air as they pour in the open window, fresh from the cool paddy afternoon.

It's bigger than Bagus I know, but he is part of it. Everyone I have met here is part of it. The old expat Ted and his bitterness is part of it too. He has lived here half his life and is still held in the thrall of it.

How lucky I am, I think to myself. Imagine if I had never gotten around to coming here, if I'd heeded the travel warnings and crossed Bali off my list.

I can smell the sea on the afternoon breeze. I hope we don't miss the sunset. Bagus told me it is a must see.

36

The shimmering egg-yolk sun is about to fall into the sea in front of us as the waiter shows us to our table on the sand. It's just one of many that fill the beach as far as I can see, belonging to all the different seafood cafés of Jimbaran Bay.

'Why so many?' I ask Gusti.

He tells me it's a favourite place for tourists to come. They like to eat here on their last night before their flights home. The tables around us are full and more people are down by the water's edge waiting to catch the ultimate snapshot moment. As if on cue the sun's liquid shape slides, then pauses. Camera lights flash up and down the beach. There is an audible 'aaaah,' then it slips beneath the horizon, leaving wispy mauve clouds to drift their trails into the night sky.

We order drinks and sit back in our plastic chairs in the squishy sand enjoying the atmosphere like everyone else. There are family groups, social groups, football groups, school groups, couples, kids, grandmas and grandpas and while there are plenty of European, Asian, and American accents, the majority seem to be Aussies and I don't think it's just me but as I look around it feels like everyone on this beach is high on life. Everyone, it seems has had a wonderful holiday and sensing the Australian continent just across the water I want to call out, 'Come on over, have a taste of this life, it's so nice here. Everyone should experience this!'

The waiters, who happen to be friends of Gusti, start bringing side dishes and pots of sauces and spices and we go back up the beach to choose our fare from the tanks of live crabs and lobsters and trays of multi-coloured, multi-sized fish sliding about on ice. Gusti says he won't eat but when I tell him I won't eat alone, he confesses his weakness for crab. I choose the lobster and we leave our sea creatures with the cooks to do the unimaginable and take our number on a stick back to the table.

The beach is now floating and flickering with tiny lights from all the candles on tables and kids twirling flashing day-glo jewellery hawked by vendors. The charcoal brazier of the corn seller down by the water's edge glows and smokes, and lights ride up into the night sky on the tails of big jets taking off from the runway jutting into the bay.

We order more drinks and Gusti and I talk.

'Tell me Gusti,' I have to ask, 'what do you think of western women?'

'They are beautiful... like you Maraleen.'

'Oh yes...' I laugh away his habitual flirt, 'And what else? Did you ever go with one?'

'Nooo, not me, I am faithful husband.'

Mm, I think, where have I heard this before?

'Did you want to?' I ask.

'Yes... no... maybe,' Gusti grins.

'But what do you think of them, Gusti, is what I want to know. You have spent a lot of time driving them around. You must have gotten to know them quite well.'

'I think their life is complicated, not so easy as we think,' he answers seriously. 'So many come here alone, searching for something. All ages, young, old, in the middle. I don't know what they are looking for. I can't understand why they are not happy with what they have. I would be happy. They have everything I want; good job, car, house and still not happy!'

'Maybe they are looking for love,' I suggest.

'But why?' Gusti exclaims. 'I don't understand! What is wrong with western men? Why can't they find a good man?'

'Maybe they don't want one,' I answer. 'Or perhaps they are too fussy, or maybe they just don't want to have to look after them in old age.'

'Yes, but if you don't look after someone who will look after you?' he replies.

Our seafood arrives on big platters piled high with rice and salad. There's far too much for two people. I hope Gusti is hungry as I won't be taking any home in a doggy bag. We start eating and I want to know more.

'Do many drivers go with western women?' I ask.

'Oh yes,' he grins, as he pulls apart the crab expertly with his long fingers. 'It's a big industry.'

'And what about their wives, what do they think?'

'Some know, but don't care. As long as he brings the money home they are happy. Sometimes the driver can get a lot of money — tell the hard luck story, only it's usually true! Many drivers can get support for their whole family that way.'

'So it's like a kind of prostitution,' I propose.

'Noo... nooo!' Gusti protests, 'more like sponsorship. Westerners feel guilty, like they are not doing enough. If they want to help, why not let them? Help put your kids through school, pay your hospital bills, build you a house. Too many people here have no money for these things. That's just the way it is for us.'

'What about Bagus,' I ask, 'is he a faithful husband?'

'Yeeees! Most of all! More faithful than me. Bagus is a good man, just like his name. He helps sooo many people in his village.'

Gusti's phone rings.

'Excuse me Marilyn.'

He answers with a lot of fast words then laughs and hands the phone to me.

'For you. Guess who?'

'Hello?' I say into the phone.

'Hello, Marilyn,' says Bagus.

'Hello, Bagus.'

'I'm very sorry Marilyn, about today. Last night when I got back from your room, Putu was already home and I think she got suspicious. She didn't say so but suddenly she had many things she wanted me to do today, so I thought I had better do it.'

'It's okay, Bagus. Gusti is doing a fine job being you. I can hardly tell the difference anyway.'

'So now you trying to make me jealous Marilyn?'

'Just joking, Bagus.'

'Ya, I'm joking too Marilyn... so thank you Marilyn, and I wish you all the best.'

'Terima kasih, Bagus. I wish the same for you.'

'Okay... and Marilyn, only one thing I ask...'

'Yes,' I reply, wondering what he is going to say.

'Don't forget me... okay?'

'I won't Bagus, no chance of that.'

'Sure?'

'I'm sure.'

'Bye Marilyn.'

'Bye, Bagus.'

I hand the phone back to Gusti. He gives me a big smile.

'So, what do you think of Balinese men?' he teases.

'Very nice,' I answer truthfully, 'too nice. Only trouble is they are all married.'

'No problem,' he quips back,' You could become the second wife. Some men still do that.'

'Would you do it Gusti?' I ask.

'Nooo! It would upset my wife too much, but if she didn't mind... maybe I wouldn't mind either,' he laughs.

I ask for the bill. It's nearly seven-thirty. I have to be at the airport by eight, and there are people waiting for our table. We say our goodbyes to his waiter friends and begin our walk back to the car. I'm reluctant to leave this idyllic scene. I can't remember when I shared such a happy space with so many of my fellow countrymen and women. It's funny how sometimes you have to travel to another country to find out what you like about your own. Like the group of middle-aged Aussie couples — maybe farmers or country people — who sat near us, having the time of their life talking, yarning and joking in warm broad accents, requesting song after song and giving generously to the wandering bands of beach musicians who play perfect renditions of Lady in Red, Love Love Me Do, Somewhere Over the Rainbow.

I can still hear them from the car park as we get in the car. Sounds like La Bamba. Everybody is joining in, celebrating their night of nights.

37

The motley crew of tourists streams towards the airport doors dragging their huge suitcases and carrying large, odd shaped, bubble wrapped carvings, statues and paintings, hoping to pass them off as cabin luggage. To the sides of the doors, holiday lovers are caught in the clinch of sad farewells. A couple of Japanese girls are saying goodbye to cute Balinese boys with dyed hair and tattoos. A tall young Balinese man with long black hair cradles the head of the pale blonde girl as she sobs into his chest. And here come Brenda and Cheryl, alighting from a silver four-wheel drive, with their dancing partners still in tow. Two long passionate hugs and kisses later they disappear through the doors and are gone. And standing near the kerb is a short, plump, middle-aged, Aussie battler saying goodbye to her short, ruddy faced, much younger, Balinese lover. He tries to make his arms reach around her waist and looks into her eyes with such affection, I feel like I will cry.

Oh God! It hits me in a blinding flash — It's not Bali that's the cliché. It's me!

I shake hands with Gusti and thank him for driving me.

I almost forget to pay him. When I ask how much, he says,

'Up to you. Up to you,'

I give him most of what I have left in my wallet.

'No no,' he says, 'you need some money for departure tax,' and hands most of it back.

'Come back again soon ya,' he tells me. 'Here is my card. Call me any time. Next time I will take you to see the big waterfall — just you and me Marilyn. Don't tell Bagus.'

He gives my hand a squeeze, kisses me on the lips, grins, and is gone.

I stand there for a moment. Am I shocked, surprised? I guess not. Gusti did tell me that he and Bagus share everything.

I can hear sirens in the distance. Not just one but a few. Must be a fire somewhere nearby I think, as I walk through the airport doors. The young blonde girl sniffles along beside me, looking back to give a last wave to her Bali boy. I want to say something helpful but instead I search in my bag and hand her a tissue. She mumbles a thank-you and rushes for the toilets.

38

I roam the shops that surround the departure gates and buy a few cheap last-minute presents on my credit card. Aussie accents and braided hair mums and daughters are all around. It's not such a flattering look, I muse, but along with painted rainbow fingernails, it's a way of bringing a little bit of Bali home.

A couple of cleaners approach me politely and ask if I will exchange a handful of gold Aussie coins for rupiah. I hand over my last notes and end up browsing in the bookshop where I find a novel by an Australian writer about a woman who comes to Bali, meets a driver and...

I buy it immediately and settling in one of the uncomfortable chairs near the departure gate become completely engrossed until the boarding call is announced.

It's only then I notice the subdued tones of passengers talking in small groups, and some concerned looking travellers comforting young people in tears. Maybe their holiday didn't turn out so well, or else they are just sad to be going home. I am sad to be leaving too, I think, as I hand my boarding pass to the steward. As if I am saying goodbye too soon to a friend I have only just started to get to know.

The soft tones of _selamat malaaaam, selamat jalaaaan,_ fade away as I step from the walkway onto the plane, aware that I am leaving one country and entering my own again. The Australian stewardess's greeting, trying for warmth, doesn't convince me.

'Good evening, madam, down the aisle to the left,' she says in her best David Jones voice.

I find my window seat and climb in over the laps of a tiny elderly Japanese couple. We nod and smile and attempt a conversation in broken English and Japanese before giving up.

The plane taxis into position and we take off into the night sky. The lights of paradise blur into cloud and disappear into darkness. Gone so quickly I think, like a fast fade to black. I put my seat back, pull my orange blanket over me and let tiredness take me.

It doesn't capture me for long. I wake up an hour or so later just when everybody else is settling into sleep. I wriggle around trying not to disturb the couple next to me who are sleeping so compactly and quietly. When I can't find a way to get comfortable, I stare out the tiny window into the night sky and think about Bagus.

I want to believe he was telling the truth. I don't think he has been with a western woman before. I think Putu would make sure of it. Gusti on the other hand would like to emulate Bagus but I don't think he has what it takes.

And the feelings between Bagus and I? Are they real or true? If by some stroke of circumstance Bagus was single, would I marry him? Would I join the ranks of western women who all over the world devote themselves to the new culture of their adoption, using their business savvy to build successful businesses while doing good charitable works at the same time? Somehow I don't think that's me. Besides I know I can't be a wife again. I don't have enough time to devote to wifely duties and I know I can't give up my solitude. Unless...

o-o-o

... I can be a writing wife with a writing husband, and we spend each day from early morning in our separate studies, coming out in the middle of the day to potter in the garden and have a leisurely lunch that he would have prepared, because he loves to cook and surprise me with delicious new dishes and all kinds of home made sourdough bread, fresh from the oven with kalamata olive dip and roasted red capsicum relish on the side... and then we would disappear into our studies again until sundown when we would go out for drinks or to a book launch or a movie and dinner at our favourite restaurant with friends, then home to bed where husband would hold me and care for me and thrill me with his tenderness long into the night.

And on the weekends we would drive to our beach house and the kids would drop in and we would go for long walks and swims with the roar of the surf cleansing our souls, and sand and salt clinging to our skin as we drive back to the city to start our week again.

And sometimes we would to travel together or alone to far off places all over the world, to attend meetings and festivals and give readings and papers or just simply to visit another unique culture before it is globalised out of existence. And we would lend our time to as many causes as possible but we would always make sure we had time for ourselves and each other and our kids and our kids' kids.

And so we would go on like this for many years until one day after a short illness husband would say goodbye and slip away and carrying on his good work along with my good work, I would find myself a widow again, only this time I would be a real widow not a fake one. So I would decide to take myself on a holiday to Bali, just to see what it was like there now and would happen to ask the driver to take me up Bagus's street and seeing his house still there I would go in and find him sitting in the place where his father used to sit, being cared for by his youngest son who is running a thriving business with resort and spa and café in the front, for now the tourist area has moved all the way to their part of the village, and I would ask if they had a room for a few days and his son would say yes of course and he would give me the same room, only now it is called an 'environ' and is cooled by an eco earth stream and has it's own natural swimming pool and solar entertainment wall and recycled water bathroom upstairs, and Bagus and I would sit together in our chairs, looking out at the rice paddies and he would tell me of Putu's passing and of the difficult economic ups and downs of the catastrophe years but now everything seemed to be okay, especially today, seeing me again.

And he would turn his still boyish, old man body towards me and say,

'I didn't forget you Marilyn.'

And I would reply,

'I didn't forget you either, Bagus.'

And he would say,

'How long are you staying?'

And I would answer,

'As long as I like, I don't have to be anywhere else.'

And he would grin and take my old lady hand in his and I would feel the warmth of his heart beating in my palm and I wouldn't let go for a long time.

39

The harsh bright lights flickering on in the cabin bring me back to consciousness. We are close to home and the stewardesses want to bring us our morning fruit juice. I try to doze as long as I can, to stay in my cosy sleepy feeling, but it's already gone. The orange line of sunrise is on the horizon. The carpet of clouds we ride is fluffy and soft like the dreams of my kids who must be fast asleep down there somewhere. The cabin load of people around me is moving about, getting ready to come back to earth and before long I see the familiar hills that surround the sprawling city I live in.

As we fly closer I notice as I have before, how everything from the air looks as if it's all part of a plan. Polluted ponds filled with poisonous heavy metals look so pretty from above. Haphazard buildings with junk filling their yards look like they were always meant to be, just as they are. Cars crawl bug-like along roads and freeways, going about their business as they should, ferrying back and forth everything they need, bringing it home to the nest. Everything looks so tiny, so cute, so toy-town. Huge monuments that from the ground overwhelm us with their presence, look so ordinary from up here. Blue sea lapping on famous yellow sandy beaches looks so clean, even though we know its faecal count is over the limit. Aqua green waters moving in and out, around treacherous reefs and sandbars, look like the pretty patterns inside a Christmas kaleidoscope and little boats bob contentedly on a gentle swell that lifts them up and down like a mother's lullaby.

'Everything seems perfect. Everything is perfect, just as it is,' I mutter out loud to myself, as our plane banks and turns inland towards the runway.

We fly in low over the bay and land on the tarmac with a thump, pulling up quickly so we don't run off the end onto a freeway. Back on home ground, I think, as I look out the window. Back to the known — no surprises. I can feel familiarity wanting to draw me into its laziness, but I don't want to go. I want to stay awake to the new. I wonder if I can.

We pull into the docking bay and everyone is on their feet, hauling bags and bubble wrapped objets d'art out of lockers, ready to rush the doors. It's not a good hour to be doing anything, least of all to be herded with a bunch of strangers from a confined space into corridors and queues, but the immigration official checking my picture to see if I am who I really am, is bright and cheery and I don't have to wait long for my bag to ride around on the carousel. I still have to get through 'To Declare' with my wood-carvings which after a thorough examination are deemed to be okay, and soon I am sailing out through the exit.

40

It's not so much fun when there is no one to pick you up. You just slip into the crowd unheralded and unwelcomed. But this arrival hall is packed, not just with eager waiting faces but there are camera crews, journalists carrying microphones, and well dressed presenters all over the place. Someone famous must be on one of the flights, I think, as I roll my trolley down the ramp Then a camera with blinding lights is in my face and a short blonde guy in a suit is asking me urgently,

'Have you just come from Bali, ma'am?'

'Yes,' I reply.

'What do you think of the latest terrorist attacks?' he asks. 'Did you see anything? Is that why you are returning early from your holiday?'

'Whaaa,' is the only sound I can utter.

'Whaaaaa.... Whaaaa... aaattacks?' I don't know what he is talking about. Maybe this is one of those stupid candid camera shows.

'The latest bombings, in Kuta and Jimbaran Bay last night. I realise you are in shock but could you tell us something.'

'Jimb... Jimb... Jimb baran...' I stutter, 'It's not possible. I had dinner there last night.'

'Which café?' he wants to know, as he leans in closer.

'I don't remember the name. My friend Gusti knows the staff...'

'Did you hear any explosions? Did you notice anything unusual?' He is becoming impatient with me.

'Hear... yeah... there was a great band playing...'

'What time did you leave, madam?'

'Around seven-thirty. I had to get to the airpor...'

The bright lights go out. The cameraman turns his camera away. The blonde reporter pulls himself out of my face and says to his crew, 'No go, she missed the whole thing.' Then he points behind me. 'Lets get that one, coming in now. Tears, good, emotion, yeah. That one, Freddy, braided hair mum. Go, go, go! Before the others get to her. Now!'

They run off in time to catch a chubby braided hair mum and her little braided hair daughter being greeted by a chubby permed hair mum. Tears are flowing and words are blubbering.

'Oh Mum, oh Mum. Isn't it terrible.'

'Thank God, you're safe. Promise me you will never go to that place again.'

And the little blonde guy and his crew get it all.

o-o-o

I push my trolley through the airport doors into the cool morning air. I pull up next to a fat limo driver leaning on his long white limo, having a cigarette.

'What happened in Bali?' I ask.

'More bombings, love. Kuta and Jimbaran, last night. Round about eight o'clock. Thirty-six dead, 111 injured, they reckon. Nearly three years to the day since the last one.'

'But I was there!' I tell him. 'At Jimbaran Bay. I had dinner there last night! I didn't see anything!'

'Jeeeeez. You're lucky darlin', reeeel lucky. I wouldn't be going back there in a hurry. Didn't you read the travel warnings?'

I pick my suitcase up off the trolley and leave it with him.

'I don't want yer trolley, love,' he calls after me.

I walk to the taxi queue. Guys like that piss me off. Thinks where he is, is safe and 'Out There' is dangerous.

You don't expect to die on your holidays, it's true, but then we don't expect it any time.

I think about all the people who were on the beach last night in that idyllic scene. I try to imagine it but it just doesn't compute.

o-o-o

I stand in the queue I feeling numb. When I get out my phone to SMS Gusti, I notice my hand is shaking. The lines must be jammed. I can't get through. I hope his friends are okay. I'll try again later.

The next taxi is mine. The driver makes no effort to get out of the car and help. I haul my bag into the back seat and give my address.

We drive out into the Sunday morning streets — barely a dog walker or churchgoer in sight. The sky is so big, the freeway we turn onto, wide and empty.

41

The driver pulls up to my front door. Our house looks so small, squashed in between the other terrace houses in the street. I fumble around for my front door key. It's lost in the bottom of my bag.

I open the door and its familiar smell greets me. Books, papers, mint from the garden. I dump my suitcase near the door, then turn back and give it a pat.

'Thanks for bringing me home safely,' I mumble.

I look around the house. Feels like I have been away for a long time. Everything seems somehow smaller and lower but it still looks okay. I like my house. It's a bit cluttered. I'll have to do a clean-out. But I like the things I have on the walls and now I have some more to add.

I creep upstairs to my kid's rooms. I check on my daughter first. She opens one eye as I push open her door.

'Hi, I'm back,' I call.

'That's good,' she murmurs sleepily. 'Did you get some good writing done?'

'Yes I think so. Go back to sleep. I'll tell you all about it later.'

I look in on my son. He seems to have grown into a man in the few days I've been away. His jaw is more square and pronounced.

He won't stir for a few hours but I can't resist, 'Hey, I'm back,' I say, squeezing his toes.

He wakes up with a start, looks at me, then closes his eyes again.

'Mmm that's good,' he mumbles, 'cos we're out of milk and bread.' Then he rolls over and falls back to sleep.

Maybe I won't tell them where I went, I think, as I go downstairs to make a cup of tea. Nobody has to know. It's going to be too hard to explain, especially now. I can just hide the presents and bring them out at Christmas time, pretending I got them at the Bali Blue shop up the road.

I check the backyard while the kettle is boiling. Looks like they've had some rain. The plants are looking fresh and my herbs have grown a couple of inches.

I take my tea into the living room and turn on the television as is my Sunday morning habit. I wish I hadn't. The media barrage is in full swing, bloodied people, body bags, reporters interviewing eyewitnesses, experts giving theories, live crosses to the wreckage, and then I see myself on the screen! Dazed, hair ruffled, looking like I just escaped from Armageddon when really I am just tired from a long flight and an uncomfortable sleep in a really small airplane seat.

The newsreader gives her commentary,

'Travellers arriving back from Bali this morning are in a state of shock. Unaware of the tragedy that unfolded on the paradise island the evening before, many were speechless when told the news.'

Cut to a shot of me with my mouth hanging open, looking like a moron.

'One woman had been eating in a Jimbaran Bay restaurant only moments before the blast. Dazed and confused she was having trouble coming to terms with her close brush with death.'

Then a shot of me repeating the sounds,

'Whaaaaa... whaaaaa...'

Then they cut to the teary reunion of braided hair mum and permed hair mum.

Caught out!

Soon everyone will know. Soon the whole country will see those dumb grabs of me played over and over.

The phone starts to ring. It will be my boss. She always watches the Sunday program.

'This is the last straw, Marilyn,' I hear her droning. 'We have tolerated all your little jaunts disguised as sickies but his one is over the top. We won't be renewing your contract I'm afraid.'

Fine with me, I think. I've had enough of libraries anyway. I'm tired of looking after other people's books. I want a book of my own. Don't know how I will pay off my trip though. Maybe I can get a part-time job as a waitress. I used to do it years ago. Can't be any different, except now there are a hundred different ways to have coffee instead of just two. The rest of the time I'll just stay home and write! Every morning I will write before I do anything else. I'll go to the toilet, glass of water, few stretches, that's it, then I'll write for as long as I can, maybe two hours maybe four, and keep going like this every day until I finish something, and then, yes, this time I promise I will give it to someone to read.

I let the phone ring out. I can't quite cope with talking to concerned friends and family who will want to know why the hell I didn't tell them I went to Bali and will want me to promise I will never go again.

On the screen there is another braided hair mum saying, 'I love Bali, but I won't be going back now. Not after this.'

I watch the footage replay again; survivors in hospital beds, tables and chairs up-ended in the sand, the crime scene cordoned off with tape.

It's true what the newsreader said; I am in shock. My brain still can't process the fact that I was there, in the same place where innocent people like me have died or been horribly wounded! But if I need any more convincing there I am on the screen again. My mouth hangs open like the chasm of fate threatening to swallow me and then closing, moving on and choosing someone else.

Who would have known? Who could have been prepared for it? Only the terrorists themselves, as they packed their backpacks full of explosives for _their_ final trip to paradise. Did they arrive? Was it as they imagined? Were the seventy-two promised virgins waiting for them or did something else more unexpected eventuate? Could they really hope to get to paradise by hurting others in this way?

So many people are hurting now, not just those directly affected. The whole island will suffer again just as it did after the first bomb. Was this the kind of provocation Nyoman was talking about, that evil spirits are capable of cooking up, to test everyone of their resolve before Galungan? If so, their timing was perfect and the whole community was never better prepared. For after three days of deep inward reflection every person on the island will celebrate the victory of good over evil and their lives will go on in the daily ritual of creating a harmonious balance of all the forces of good and bad around them.

That's why Bali is a paradise, I conclude, not because it has palm trees and sandy beaches and hotel resorts stretching for miles and miles, but because even in death, every day on that island is a celebration of life. Evil can try to butt in, but doesn't stand a chance.

One thing is for sure. I'm not going to let any terrorist ruin my holiday plans. I will go back within the year and I will take my kids. We'll go in the low season and stay away from Kuta. And we probably won't go to Jimbaran on our last night.

We'll visit Bagus and his family and bring them a special gift. Maybe get a washing machine for Putu. And a crocodile hunter hat for Bagus. And one for Gusti as well.

My daughter comes downstairs.

'What's happened?' she says. The television coverage has looped around once more. There I am on the screen again.

'Whaaaaa... whaaaaaa.'

'Muuuum! Is that you? Why are you on TV?'

'It's a long story,' I say. 'Don't worry, I'll tell you all about it.

'I brought you some presents. Do you want to see them?'

o-o-o-o-o-o

_Thank you for reading my book. If you enjoyed it, won_ _'_ _t you please take a moment to leave me a review at your favourite retailer? Thanks! Jan Cornall._

About the author

Jan Cornall began her artistic career as an actor and writer in Melbourne in the early 70s. Awarded numerous grants and fellowships, Jan has written plays, musicals, a feature film, short stories, poems, a novel and three CDs of songs. Her arts and travel articles have been published in the _Jakarta Post_ , _The Daily Telegraph_ , _Adelaide Advertiser_ and _Realtime Arts_.

During her Asialink Residency in Jakarta in 2006, Jan collaborated with a number of Indonesian poets, artists and musicians, writing her Bali-based novel Take Me to Paradise and producing a jazz poetry CD with poet Sitok Srengenge and jazz pianist Imel Rosalin. Jan wrote, produced and performed in the stage show of Take Me to Paradise with Indonesian musicians and performers, including Sitok Srengenge and Jumaadi, for Oz Asia Festival in Adelaide in 2008. At Gang Festival in Sydney Jan took part in a residency with short story writer Triyanto Triwikromo.

A regular guest at festivals and literary events in the Asia Pacific region, Jan entertains audiences with her witty performance poetry and sung word. Her latest book, Archipelagogo, draws together songs, poems and stories penned during her travels in Indonesia over a decade.

Based in Sydney, Jan also mentors writers and leads writing retreats in international locations including Bali, Fiji, Laos, Burma, Morocco, Vietnam. A number of her students each year go on to publish with major publishing houses.

Connect with Jan Cornall

Writer's Journey

Follow Jan Cornall on Twitter: @_WritersJourney

Friend Jan Cornall on Facebook: www.facebook.com/Writersjourney

Favourite Jan Cornall at Smashwords

Discover other works by Jan Cornall

 Archipelagogo: Love Songs to Indonesia — songs, poems and stories penned and performed during Jan's travels in Indonesia, published 2013. As Jan says:

'I was a late arrival in paradise. I'd been meaning to come for years, but didn't arrive in Bali until 2002. When I returned to take part in the Ubud Writers & Readers Festival in 2004, I met Indonesian authors, artists and poets who invited me to come to Java. If I'd been entranced by Bali, I was doubly taken by Javanese beauty, generosity and hospitality, which was in total contrast to the images flashed on Australian TV screens of terrorists, Muslim extremists and fanatical demonstrators. I became an instant Indo-groupie, a naive lover of all things Indonesian, and I coined the expression 'Indonesian handbag' to describe my state. _Archipelagogo_ presents a decade's worth of songs, poems and stories penned while travelling Indonesia, in tandem with the whimsical paintings of Indonesian artist Jumaadi, one of the friends I met along the way.'

_Take Me to Paradise_ is also available as a paperback published by Saritaksu Editions.

Both books are available through the Writers Journey online shop.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Sarita Newson and Kadek Krishna Adidharma of Saritaksu Editions; Komunitas Utan Kayu, Jakarta; Asialink; and Helen Williams for ebook production support.

A special _terima kasih_ to the people of Bali.

Credits

First published by Saritaksu Editions 2006.

Cover design by Louie Joyce

Copyright

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favourite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

