‘Stop!’ Neng shouted. She put her hands under Adam’s armpits and hauled him into a sitting position. ‘This is not fair. Leave the bike or I’ll kick your balls.’
‘O-oh, look who’s talking,’ the croaky voice said. ‘What you going to do, help this weakling? Look how tiny he is! Look at those little fat legs. He’s not worth getting beaten up over. Right, boys?’ The voice was steadier now, threatening.
‘At least he can read and write. You’re nearly an adult and you still can’t read.’ Neng was trying to yank Adam into a standing position but Adam’s legs were still weak.
‘You just want the bike for yourself, that right?’ The man-boy took a step towards Neng; he looked nearly twice as big as she was.
‘Just leave him alone.’
The boy raised his hand and hesitated a second before slapping Neng hard. ‘You’re just a dirty foreigner too,’ he said. ‘Look at you, a dirty monster.’ Neng stood blinking at him, as if she had not been struck.
‘Careful, Yon,’ a smaller boy said in a quiet voice. ‘She’s Madurese. You know what they’re like.’
‘I don’t care,’ the boy croaked. ‘These bloody foreigners, they come here and all they do is cause trouble, taking our land. They’re going to chase us off our own island soon, there’ll be nothing left for us. There’ll be more of them than us! That’s what my dad says. He’s fed up with them. Need to teach them a lesson from time to time, he says.’
‘Yon, c’mon, let’s take the bike and go. Don’t get mixed up with the Madurese. They’re big-time trouble.’
‘But this one’s only a girl. My dad says all Madurese women are prostitutes anyway. The sooner we teach her who’s boss around here, the better.’
Adam had managed to get up to a half-kneeling position, one leg still trailing on the ground, when he saw Neng raise her knee, swiftly, in one firm, neat motion; it thudded into the boy’s crotch with a loud squashy noise and he crumpled silently to the ground. He put his hand between his legs to protect himself but it was no use. Neng stood over him and continued to kick him in that same spot, sometimes hopping up and down to stamp on his crotch as if putting out a cigarette. His cries cut through the ringing in Adam’s ears and made him feel less sick; it was as if someone had doused Adam with cold water, and he was able to rise slowly to his feet. The other boys had backed off; Neng was straddling the bicycle and ringing its bell. ‘Come on,’ she said gaily to Adam, as if nothing had happened. She patted the horizontal bar in front of her. ‘You sit here, I’ll cycle. OK? Great. Off we go!’
Along the coast road the wind was fresh and tinged with the softness of impending rain. The clouds strained the sunlight that fell on the waves, and this made the sea look calm in places but dark and mysterious in others. It was often like this on Perdo, where the slightest shift in the weather could change the very nature of the island. On those days when the sun was high and unflinching the possibility of rain would seem ridiculous, and on rainy days, when water soaked through everything, you might believe that even if the sun were to reappear, it would never be able to dry the moisture from the earth. But there were other days, too – days such as today, when you could feel both the dry dustiness and the heavy moisture that made up the very air on this island.
Neng produced a banana from her pocket. It was blackened and squashed, the pulp beginning to ooze from its tip where it had been torn from its comb. ‘You look tired,’ she said, handing it to Adam. ‘Eat this. It’ll make you feel better.’
It was very ripe and mushy and sweet. Adam ate it quickly and wiped the stickiness from his fingers on his shorts. Maybe it was the fresh breeze, maybe it was his imagination, but the trembling in his chest began to subside, his heartbeat calming. He blinked; there was dust in his eyes and he turned his head from the wind. His face was very close to Neng’s now, and he could see the tiny imperfections, the fragile creases of skin on the scar on her face. She was smiling, and stuck out her tongue at him, just as she had done on the day. It was beginning to rain: the first heavy drops of a shower, falling through the leaves above them.
‘Hey, it’s getting late,’ said Neng. ‘You look tired. I think you should just go home. We’re not far from where you live.’
‘But I want to go with you – you know, to help you collect your rice.’
The bicycle slowed to a halt and Adam had to hop off it. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll go on my own. Your father will be worried. Besides, you look really tired. I don’t want to get the blame – I’ve been blamed for enough things already!’ She handed him the bike and began to walk off into the distance, heading away from the coast into the hills. The rain was falling heavily now, an earnest downpour that would not ease up for at least an hour, maybe two. Adam felt a sudden panic at being left behind, and started to follow her. She turned round and said, ‘If you follow me I’ll kick your balls too.’
He watched her splash through the puddles that were forming on the road; the rain fell like a thick curtain of mist, and within a few seconds she was out of sight.
As he cycled home, Adam felt the rain running in thin rivulets down his face and neck until his entire body was wet. Occasionally a gust of wind would sweep raindrops into his eyes and he would have to slow down and blink hard just to see where he was going; his plimsolls were soaked through and his toes felt clammy and gritty. But the rain and wind were not cold, and he was no longer tired. Funny, he thought: at this moment, he didn’t even fear what tomorrow might bring.
‘Where have you been, son?’ Karl said, rushing to meet him with an enormous towel that he held between outstretched arms, the way the fishermen hold their nets before flinging them out to sea.
‘Nowhere,’ said Adam, letting Karl towel his hair vigorously. ‘I just took my time. It was…it was raining.’
With his head wrapped in the darkness of the towel, Adam knew how unconvincing this sounded. For a moment, he considered telling Karl all that had happened. He was doing something wrong, he knew that. He knew he ought to share everything with Karl because Karl did the same for him; Karl had taken him in and shared his whole life with Adam, so why couldn’t Adam do this tiny thing for him? He also knew that if he was going to tell Karl he must do it immediately, otherwise the opportunity would be lost. Two, three, four, five seconds. The moment was gone.
Adam did not feel bad at all. Now that the moment was over it did not seem as if he had done anything wrong. Karl lifted the towel from his head and draped it across his shoulders, letting it fall around him like a cape. He looked at Adam unblinkingly, waiting for an explanation, but Adam merely stared out at the murky sea.
Karl said, ‘You should go and change out of those wet clothes.’
The next day, Neng was waiting for him in the shade of some trees, not far from where the main road curved towards the town; the dirt track that led to school ran like a tangent away from the road, disappearing into the bushes beyond. ‘Let’s skip school, maybe go for a walk. It isn’t going to rain today,’ Neng anounced, squinting at the sun.
They left the coast behind and began to cycle along the gravel tracks that led into the hills, and when the path became too steep they hid the bike behind some bushes and began to walk. The coarse earth crunched underfoot, the black volcanic sand sticking to Neng’s bare toes and covering them like tar. She talked endlessly, pointing things out to Adam: a flock of brilliant green parakeets fluttering like giant locusts in the distance; a boulder the shape of a hand with its fingers cut off; the coral reefs which, from up in the hills, resembled a map, a huge watery atlas.
She told him about herself, too. Her father was in jail because he’d killed someone, she said cheerily. Well, not exactly killed him, but the man he’d had a fight with had died, purely by accident. All Neng’s father had done was hit him; OK, he hit him quite hard, even her mother said so, but still, he wasn’t