You are one scary b.a.s.t.a.r.d when you are angry, she said. You can buy me a new ashtray. I don't like people breaking my things.

Then she held my face in her hands and looked straight into my eyes.

I won't get angry, she said, and I won't ask you for any money back. I just want to know if you have a girlfriend. Please tell me the truth. Fajar, do you have a girlfriend?

I did not waver, but stared back into the deep blueness and answered: No.

I was bursting to have her then, and tore at her dress, and was on her like a stallion, pus.h.i.+ng her down and stabbing into her from behind. She did not know that I was her master, but I did. She would not control me, or have me follow any rules. Nor my mother, nor Agus, nor anybody else. I came hot and fast, almost straight away, and then she was on top of me. We wrestled with each other in naked fury. Breathless. Exploding. Until the call to prayer came many hours later, to tell us it was morning.

Chapter Ten.

Vic

19 October After six months at the school, my boss asked me to stay on for another programme. I told him yes, but that I couldn't stay in the noisy boarding house any more. The house they have given me in Tangerang is beautiful. It is cool with old gold candelabras on the wall and carved wooden furniture and a huge antique mirror with a large crack down the middle of it. There are no windows in the back of the house, but you can open the skylight and look at the stars, and sometimes get the fragrance of night jasmine mixed in with the petrol fumes. Fajar and I arrived by bike, with the whole neighborhood looking on. Inside the house were three servants, watching with intense curiosity as I unpacked.

When they were all back again in the morning, grinning and cackling as they watched me make breakfast, I said to Fajar: You'll have to tell them to get out; I can't stand this this is a rented property not some kind of free entertainment for the local cleaners.

They didn't like being asked to leave, as the house had been vacant for some time and they had been using it as a meeting place. The one remaining woman, who is actually employed to work there, let me know by spilling bleach all over my laundry the next day. I didn't mention the bleach, acted as if it had never happened, but my laundry basket remained empty for a week and finally she could not restrain herself.

Where you laundry? I wash for you you give me money.

Oh, no thank you, I said. Never mind.

If only I could wash my own things and clean my own house and put a big new lock on the door that says mind your own business and leave me alone'. I already knew I would pay the woman far too much money to do increasingly less and less housework and let her friends in to look at my things while I am out. I pay another woman to actually wash and iron for me and Fajar picks the clothes up and drops them off, thereby becoming the target of the villagers' hatred.

When you walk down the street here the people stand and stare at you you can feel the eyes boring into your back and they talk too. When you turn around to confront them they are impa.s.sive and just ask you what you want. These are small groups of people from up-country who get paid very little and they also don't really get trained and they don't have any way (or desire) to get out. They have tiny rooms that are more like closets, and because of this they live most of their lives outside the house, standing around together, watching the street.

It has been several months and I have still not met the landlord of this beautiful house, as he has been on an extended trip to Hawaii, which sounds about as far away from here as you can get. But I sent him messages mostly to do with other strangers appearing, occasionally, in the house without knocking. They must have their own key, and I don't know why they come here, or how often when I am out.

He has never replied.

24 October Speak of the devil. The landlord has finally come back after months away. He knocked on the door at around nine yesterday evening. He was drunk I noticed straight away and there was the inevitable sandy moustache, balding pate, and huge pores on his nose to let the alcohol out. He was holding a half-empty gla.s.s of something and ice and a huge friendly grin.

I'm busy at the moment, I said, but he pushed past me.

Oh, you're not too busy to have a drink with me, surely?

He almost crashed into Fajar, who was standing outside the bedroom, barefoot and s.h.i.+rtless.

Well, I do have someone here but perhaps he would like a drink too.

Fajar declined the offer and began to put on his s.h.i.+rt and jacket.

I went to pour my neighbour and landlord a gin, but he produced a tiny bottle of airline scotch from his trouser pocket and added it to his gla.s.s.

Just some ice, he said, and a little soda. I never leave home without them. This is such a terrible country. The amount of times I've been stuck at some function and they've got c.o.ke and Fanta on the table! You've got to get through a whole night of shaking hands and terrible speeches on nothing at all!

He switched topic as Fajar left by the front door.

I can see your reasons for being here are not altruistic.

I did not smile.

Should they be?

His own face froze mid-grin.

Ah be careful, I could hear him thinking. She's a b.i.t.c.h!

I knew this man. I could tell immediately that he had never had s.e.x with a woman and was afraid of us. He has an Indonesian boyfriend, of course, but he is middle cla.s.s, and for some reason this means it is not as scandalous as my own liaison. I did not question his motives for being in Jakarta, but he decided to tell me anyway. He belongs to some charity a.s.sociated with Indonesian art. He is a painter and a businessman, whatever that means. I have met a lot of businessmen' in South-East Asia. This could mean he is living on inherited money, or that he has set up a small restaurant, which he sometimes oversees. It could mean that he dabbles in import-export. The most important thing for me is that I don't want to know. When he finally went home and I cleaned up a little, I noticed that he had left a couple of airline scotches amongst the couch cus.h.i.+ons, like an alcoholic chicken who has left an egg behind.

29 October Now that Ramadan is finished, and so also all the frenzied, guilty s.e.x that went with it, I am getting more than bored with Jakarta.

It has been almost two months since the big fight with Fajar, and I have somehow managed to forget about the scratches and the ashtray shattering on the floor. I am restless, though. The plan is to finish the next programme, leave Fajar and go home. I have not wanted to abandon him in Jakarta with nothing, but I know also that I can't take him home to Australia, even if he agreed to come. His family would never speak to him again, and I won't be responsible for that.

On Sunday, I went walking through the filthy streets on my way to a charity exhibition. I had only accepted the invitation because I was desperate for anything to do. I walked past more pale blue towers going up, more places to buy donuts and gold watches that will tick and tick and tick in the heavy opulent air. On Sunday afternoons you see the well-heeled families of Jakarta eating dim sum and ravioli in the vast, expensive eateries sitting at the tables while the maid stands up next to them, holding the baby.

The outdoor food market had the desolate feeling of an abandoned circus: tattered food wagons pulled around in a ring. I got some grey fried rice there and, almost before I sat down, two boys came at me with guitars and a plastic cup. They couldn't play or sing. They strummed and mumbled their way through half a song, eyes cast down at the wooden bench. You do not pay them for entertainment, you pay them to go away. As soon as they were gone, another duo appeared from nowhere. They were almost the same boys identical embarra.s.sed looks, frayed jeans, faded T-s.h.i.+rts and long skinny fingers. They couldn't play either. When they were replaced by the third set of boys, I gave up and walked away, leaving the rice. There is always someone standing behind someone you are helping no end to the requests for what you have, which in my case, was finite, I reminded myself as I left the last two boys with an empty can. I'd have to fill up on pinwheel sandwiches and natty little snacks at the hotel.

Walking past the tiny caravans selling cigarettes, I resisted the urge to buy a packet. Ever since the argument when Fajar had broken my ashtray, I had wanted another cigarette. I felt a yearning, which was all that habit ever was: craving and being satisfied, craving and being satisfied, a daily rhythm, rocking like a cradle.

I have not stopped craving you, Fajar, with your bull fighter's splendour energy packed in and springing from all corners bang bang bang going off like a firecracker. You dive and swim and s.h.i.+mmy; you are green like the fingers of the banana, like the eyes of a green G.o.d, you are green like the water that glistens. You are brown skin melting like chocolate onto my paleness. You are the moth cras.h.i.+ng in the shadows. You are falling like a panther from the jungle sky, stalking through the cinnamon-scented malls where the rich people stroll. You are the burst of green calling through the traffic. I have not stopped craving you, Fajar, and I cannot leave.

I arrived on time to the charity exhibition and I knew before I bought the ticket that I would win the door prize. I always do. The artist was ordinary nice sketches of basically the same image over and over, rows of derelict huts dwarfed by these huge buildings springing up like giant weeds, and the inevitable makes.h.i.+ft was.h.i.+ng lines next to motorbikes and more skysc.r.a.pers. They made me feel sad and bored at the same time. I couldn't help thinking that while the people here would pay top dollar for these pictures of everyday poor people's lives, they would never have any relations.h.i.+p with those people, other than as master to servant or missionary to ... what? Victim? If I had tried to bring Fajar in there, we would both have been discreetly shown the door, but someone might hang a sketch of his rickety house above their mantelpiece in the name of art or charity.

Some amba.s.sador's wife who was a bit of a wag opened the exhibition. I met the woman who was running the show at the door and she confided in me a few seconds after we had met that she hadn't had s.e.x for eleven years. (Another one, I thought. All these s.h.i.+pwrecked female ex-pats not getting any.) The exhibition was in a hotel lobby, which was like all the hotel lobbies in Jakarta high tea and someone at the piano playing bland, tinkly music beneath the tall gla.s.s ceilings. My boss was there, being the cultured public servant. So was Ricky, the office c.o.c.kney, but I did not acknowledge him, as he had refused to shake hands with Fajar some weeks before. It was when Ricky had come to my house to pick up some papers, and left as Fajar was arriving. I introduced them at the gate. Fajar held out his hand and Ricky walked straight past him. It seemed his love of the breezy London working cla.s.s did not extend to the Indonesian equivalent, although his own wife was a poor local. I think he thought it different because she was married to him. I took some time later to explain it to Fajar.

This kind of person is s.h.i.+t, honey. That's all you really need to know.

And I also told him: My mother used to clean the toilets at a university. Do you know that? We teachers are not special, rich people. We are here because we grew up with a different government, because we speak English and we are white.

My mother's toilet-cleaning money had paid for piano and French lessons for me, which I had done very well at, until one surprising day when I made a sudden and irreversible play for freedom. It had been a turn for the better.

Standing in the lobby in the swarm of international pseudo socialites, I suddenly felt life had taken a terrible turn for the worse. Nevertheless, I actually won both door prizes including, after all that hunting for wine, an eighty-five-dollar bottle of champagne. I planned to take it home and drink it with Fajar, but wouldn't tell him it cost about the same as his monthly motorbike payment. I also won four bottles of red and refrained from doing the n.o.ble thing of letting them be raffled off again.

These people earn ten times what we earn, I told Noreen, another teacher I had spotted amongst the mining and emba.s.sy people.

Even the scholars.h.i.+p students are getting more than us. I'm keeping the wine.

1 November Well, they say that love is blind but what is this? Blind, deaf and upside down, and most of all a f.u.c.king liar. Yesterday I left my phone at home and got back from work to find that I had twenty missed calls from an unknown number, and the following messages: PLEASE DON'T TEXT, CALL OR SPEAK TO FAJAR AGAIN.

AND DON'T CALL HIM HONEY OR BABE. IT'S NOT LIKE HE IS YOUR BOYFRIEND.

and I HATE YOU BECAUSE YOU HAVE TAKEN FAJAR FROM ME.

There were more, but I didn't read them yet.

WHO ARE YOU? I asked.

YOU KNOW WHO I AM.

NO I DON'T REALLY WHO ARE YOU???

I AM FAJAR'S GIRLFRIEND.

I hesitated before replying.

SO AM I HIS GIRLFRIEND.

NO, VIC, I KNOW WHO YOU ARE. HE IS DRIVER FOR YOU.

HOW DO YOU KNOW MY NAME?.

HE TALKING ABOUT YOU SOMETIMES.

I decided to call the number. A little girl voice answered. She was crying. We struggled through some questions, in English and Bahasa. As far as I could tell, they had been together for some time, long before I came to Indonesia. They have plans to marry. He left his phone at her house by mistake. That is how she managed to read my messages.

My first instinct was to apologise. She was happy with that, sensing that I recognised her prior claim. I could feel the depth of Fajar's betrayal of her and I was shocked when she told me her age.

Twenty-one.

How can you think to get married at twenty-one?

Actually, twenty-one isn't young for an Indonesian woman. At twenty-six you are virtually an old maid.

I am very sorry, I told her again.

Alright, Vic and you must promise not talking to him ever again.

No, I have to talk to him tonight.

Vic you must never tell Fajar that I know about this. We will keep it a secret.

No, I said. We will not.

She wanted me to just walk away, after everything. She wanted me to simply disappear. We argued back and forth until one of us hung up. Then something else occurred to me the scratches on Fajar that led to our big argument. Was it her, or was it another woman? I texted back we were better at reading than speaking each other's languages anyway.

HAVE YOU HAD s.e.x WITH HIM?.

WHAT?.

s.e.x. DO YOU HAVE s.e.x WITH FAJAR?.

WHAT ARE YOU ASKING ME?.

I DO ALMOST EVERY DAY.

ARE YOU SAYING YOU HAVE LAIN WITH HIM AS MAN AND WIFE?.

I turned off the phone then, unable to give an answer to such an innocent question. It obviously wasn't her. I called Fajar immediately.

I've been talking on the phone to your girlfriend.

The whole year fell down around us with one small exclamation: Oh.

An hour later he was sitting on the end of my bed crying. We had been hugging and crying since he burst through the door.

I'm sorry, Vic. I'm sorry, Vic, but I LOVE YOU.

Then why are you going to marry her?

Vic, you have already told me that we cannot be together. And it is true. My mother also would not allow me to be with you.

I know that he is telling the truth. I can't imagine bringing Fajar back to Australia. I have seen the way that people look at mismatched couples from South-East Asia the fat old men with their child brides. I couldn't do it to him. Besides, apart from having this affair with me, Fajar is a conventional Muslim. He will break the rules, but only in the way they are allowed to be broken.

What is her name?

He doesn't answer for a minute.

Fajar, what is her name?

Aryanti.

Why are you going to marry Aryanti?

Vic, she is Muslim girl. She loves me.

Do you love her?

A little bit.

And you have promised to marry her.

He doesn't deny this and doesn't look at me. I should be furious, I shouldn't let him near me, but we have not stopped touching each other since he arrived. He leans back on my legs and starts to read my phone messages. He is suddenly terrified.

Vic, have you told her we are having s.e.x?