Saturday morning “rest day” but what is the right music for filing taxes, not-quite-numbness to abuse with aftertaste of anxiety? Does the completion even register as accomplishment? Worse than the dentist!
Next. Lucky I washed my hair last night because coffee and croissants (vegan) come with a video call from Java. Everyone’s faces look so good and smiling and W. with sleepy teenager hair a-fluff. Ibuk takes a moment to connect but, smile of recognition on her face and I feel a warm glow, like sunshine from inside. All conversation hints at family melodrama but those topics remain background for now.
Next. Again by motorbike to Carangsari, we pick up yesterday’s coffee order, change into “casual traditional” (pakai sarung. I wear lipstick now, and face powder) to visit a bereaved family in the village. A man who was part of the rafting community, a nephew of Pak S., we sit, drink coffee, E. chats with a cousin smoking clove cigarettes. I smile and nod along.
A certain barrier. With local people (mostly men) who have worked in the tourism trade, spent time with foreigners, they are bold with me and expect me to be bold back. Interested in business. I don’t like to disappoint but I’m not that kind of bule. It takes time to build back trust. To demonstrate I’m neither opportunity nor opportunist. My quiet works well enough for that. Maybe they think I’m simple minded, it’s ok to be benignly misunderstood.
This also is my work. Mothers and grandmothers hug me, pat my butt, tell me I’m cantik. I tell them back, of course. Bu S., always making offerings, doesn’t stop smiling. She holds my hands as if my very presence is a blessing. They make me eat and drink, I don’t resist. My body belongs to them for a while.
At last. A quiet moment in the loteng. Warm woodlight. Leafing through inherited notebooks.
On the way back, day fades. Piles of burnt chaff smoulder in the fields, plumes disperse as a pink haze. In the east, Gunung Agung appears in lavender-grey silhouette, silent and immense. Inhalation, exhalation. Then slips back under covers as waxing crescent follows crimson sun, sinking in the west.