No Conversation

I watched as a man, perhaps their father, dove into the cold, mountain river over and over.  Every few dives he’d come up with a fish and put it in a bamboo basket floating near the bank.  The boys would wade over to it with him and watch him plop the fish in, look and exclaim over it for a while, then go back to watching the man with intent and focus as he watched for the silver flash beneath the water, then slide in after it.  Sometimes they’d dive in trying out what they’d been watching, but they always came up empty-handed.

Durian is the noxious, spiky fruit that is found throughout Southeast Asia, loved like a member of the family in Sumatra; it just so happened that durian was in season when I hit northern Sumatra.  I had heard about it before my trip from travel shows and books.  Peoples’ reactions to eating it vary greatly.  Some people love it and can’t get enough, some can’t get beyond the smell even before it’s opened.  Sumatrans I spoke to believed it has serious addicting qualities and always stressed eating it in moderation.

I was on my way to Kutacane on a minibus.  All the other passengers had been let off along the way so it was just me and the driver.

“Durian?” he said pulling over to a stand.

“I want to try it, but in Kutacane, yes?” I told him, wanting to get there quickly so I could find another bus to take me to the countryside.  Of course he had no idea what I was saying and so bought a couple durian

Ah, durian.

Ripe durian is the size and shape of a football with rounded ends.  Sharp spikes stud the outside, each about a centimeter in diameter and half as high.  If you throw a durian up into the air and catch it you will have bloody holes dotting your palms and fingers.  Before it’s cut open it smells like any kind of anonymous rotting fruit but slightly sweeter.  Slits are hacked into one end with a machete and the layers are peeled back into sixths when the rotting fruit smell is intensified and the scent of rotting onions is added.  The fruit stall owner carried the carving out deftly and handed us the opened durian.  The stink immediately filled the van and the driver offered it to me.

I pulled out a pit the size of two golf balls coated with goopy yellow flesh and smelled it – not any better up close.  The driver grinned at me, spit his pit into his palm and threw it out the window and grabbed another one.  I put mine in my mouth, ready to turn my head out the window should I begin gagging and vomiting, but instead of tasting apples and oranges and bananas after seething in their own juices in the hot sun for a month, I tasted sweet, sweet custard.  We finished both durians and sat with full stomachs and awful smells wafting from our lips.  I had the same revolted reaction every time I took my first bite during each of my many durian sessions in Sumatra, and each time there was a moment when I didn’t believe there was any way I was going to put this horrible smelling piece of fruit into my mouth and actually swallow it, but after the first taste I would soon be lapping up all the stringy custard I could before whomever I was sharing it with could steal more.

I spent a week and a half in Ubud on the island of Bali.  Most evenings I would be at the Deli Cat, a little restaurant owned by an Icelander located a few steps from my guesthouse.  The regular clientele was made up of artists and writers and musicians, most of whom were expats and had been living in Ubud for years.  The only regular Indonesian I saw there was a handsome, lean Javanese.  Tribal tattoos wrapped his biceps and long, silky black hair hung to his elbows.  Every other night he was with a different Western woman.  He would play guitar and croon to them, a fragile but masculine voice filling the open air restaurant.  He always seemed confident in himself around women, carried himself in a way that said he knew he was beautiful and that, darling, you too could have him.  He talked to them about his art and his music and about the love he had for them, each of them, as he held his cigarette in his long, feminine fingers.

A group of travelers plus the Javanese sat together one night, drinking and laughing and talking.  He pulled the guitar out first and played a soft, sweet Indonesian tune that, as always, melted the woman next to him.  He passed the guitar around.  I had played guitar for over a decade but always for myself or close friends, often terrified of a larger, more anonymous audience.  But that evening, half drunk in the middle of Bali, I decided I would go for it.  Nerves helped to amplify my voice and strengthen my strumming, quite a bit too loud for the small area.  The Javanese looked away from his girl and intently watched me.  I was belting out one of my own songs, Indonesia its debut country, when my heavy hand fell across the strings once more and snapped a string.  Laments went around the table along with laughter and applause.  The Icelandic owner sat behind me.

“You play too loud,” he told me.  “If you break a string, you play too loud.”  He downed some wine.

“I’m sorry,” I said, mortified.  “I’ll buy you a string.”

“The string is not important,” he said, angry.  “Music is important.  Music is not about how loud you can be.  Music is about the feeling you put into it.”

Embarrassed, I stayed away from the Deli cat for the next few nights until my last day in Ubud.  I walked home in the dark and saw the Javanese sitting by himself on the patio smoking a cigarette.  “Chris,” he called to me.  “Come, drink with me.”  I sat down across from him at his table.  Smoke from his cigarette and a mosquito coil curled around us.  “How have you been Chris?  You have been good?”

“I’ve been okay.  Yourself?”

He clicked his tongue and ashed his cigarette behind him.  “Maaan,” he said.  “This woman.”  He breathed out smoke in a sigh.  “Do you have a woman?”

“No.”

“Good.  Women are hell, Chris.  They are horrible.”

My beer came and I waited for him to continue.  He kept smoking, looking out toward the darkened soccer field beside the Deli Cat.

“Women come here from the West on vacation and they meet me, and the moment I meet them I am theirs, I love these women.  My first seeing them and I love them!  So we meet up and we go out, and we have passion and we have fun.  Then I’m sorry, they say, I’m sorry but I have to go back home.  I will come back, I will see you again.  So we e-mail each other, once, twice, a few times.  Then nothing.  Then a year later they come back, and they are on vacation, and they want me again for another week.  They get angry when they see me with another woman.  How can they be angry?  They want me to stay here waiting for them, not hearing from them?  They say I thought you loved me.  Of course I love them, I cannot help it!  I wish I could stop, but I see the woman and I simply love her.  My entire body and mind loves her, but then she leaves me, and what do I do?  This is where I live, I have to just sit in my home and wait?”

He stubbed his cigarette out and lit another.  “I am sorry Chris.  Lots of emotions tonight.  You haven’t been here in a few days, I thought you left.”

“Nah, I’ve been around.  But I’m leaving tomorrow.”

He nodded.  “I want to hear the rest of your song someday if you are back.”  I was surprised he remembered.  “It is true you were loud, what he said about that was true.  But you were loud because there is something behind it.  It wasn’t empty, you weren’t empty, you just have to learn to control it, to control the emotion.”  He took a drag and blew it out.  “Everybody does.”