‘Here you have the Occident’s finest at play,’ Margaret said. ‘See those two guys? Pulitzer winners a few years back. They’re supposed to be reporting on one of the most urgent political situations in the world and what do they do? Chase after girls they can’t get at home. And that idiot over there, yes, that one canoodling with the Batak girl, he’s meant to be administering aid for the World Bank, but it doesn’t look as if he’s capable of administering anything but a strawberry daiquiri.’
‘Do you know everyone here?’ Din asked.
‘I recognise a few faces.’
A big pink-faced man with sandy hair and freckles came through the doors and headed straight for Margaret. He had a young local girl with him, tall for a Javanese and quite fair. ‘Margaret, how are you? Haven’t seen you in ages – not since last year’s fourth of July party at the Lazarskys’. Who’s the boyfriend?’
‘He’s not my boyfriend, he’s my colleague at the university.’ She was about to introduce Din when she noticed he had slipped away, heading for the toilet. ‘How’s the girlfriend, Bill?’
‘Fine,’ he said, putting a fleshy arm across his companion’s shoulders, ‘just fine. Her name’s Susanti, but I just call her Sue.’
‘Been together long?’
‘Guess so. Longest since I got here, at any rate,’ he laughed, patting his pockets in search of his cigarettes.
‘Wow. Two weeks? Congratulations.’
He smiled for a moment then broke into an over-hearty laugh. ‘You just kill me. You’re still just so…Margaret.’
‘See you around, Bill.’
A table and two chairs became free at the back of the room, in a shadowy corner where the light bulbs had gone out. Margaret went over and sat down, making a cursory attempt to fiddle with the bulbs. She preferred everything to be bathed in light, preferably sunlight. It was not that she was afraid of the dark: she just did not like it, for it frustrated her not to be able to make things out clearly. The windows looked out on to narrow streets away from the noise and great rush of traffic of the grand roundabout. There were not so many people here, just a few of the embassy drivers waiting for their bosses to finish dinner. They milled about in small groups, smoking and exchanging gossip. Most of them were smartly dressed in creased trousers and khaki shirts, but there were a number of other locals who were more difficult to place: bodyguards trying to look casual, perhaps, or local journalists bribing the drivers for information. Margaret tried to discern the differences between them. She was good at this, good at spotting what lay behind this Asian mask of inscrutability. She had learnt to do this in the jungle, with tribes who wore real masks and whose body language was indecipherable to outsiders, and she applied it with great success everywhere in Indonesia, even in this city of three million people. In America and Europe she had not been quite so successful; her antennae did not pick up the right signals with other occidentals. She had not really even been able to understand her parents.
‘So who was your friend earlier?’ Din said, joining her at the table.
‘What friend?’
‘That American man.’
‘Bill Schneider, you mean? He’s not a friend. He works at the Embassy. Not exactly sure what he does – something to do with finance. Well, OK, I think he arranges all the bribes from our wonderful country to your wonderful country to build all your wonderful projects.’
‘Like this hotel?’
‘Probably Although I think this hotel might have been funded with Japanese baksheesh – not that it makes any difference. Bill and his lot certainly have their fingers in the pie now. I tell you, that man is everywhere.’
They watched him drinking a tall glass of beer with a group of friends. He stubbed out his cigarette with clumsy little jabs and punched people on the shoulder to emphasise his jokes. He laughed a lot, always loudly. From across the room they could only catch snippets of what he was saying. ‘…last year the Yankees got unlucky, this year they’re gonna step up…I’m tellin’ ya, you can’t lose with a name like Yogi Berra…’
‘He can at least speak Indonesian,’ Margaret said, ‘and Russian too, which is a big help in this town.’
Din nodded. ‘His girlfriend is very pretty.’
‘He’s got bags of that je ne sais quoi that girls find so irresistible: US dollars. Do you want another Coke?’
Din shook his head. ‘Thank you, but I have to go. It’s a long way home for me.’
‘I think I’ll head home too. I’m sorry the evening was a bit dull.’
They walked through the grand lobby where smart-looking men in bush jackets and expensive women in shimmering dresses turned to look at them. They stood at the entrance for a moment or two, unsure of how to bid each other goodbye. A kiss? Out of the question. A hug? Still too intimate. Handshake? Too formal.
‘See you tomorrow, I guess,’ Margaret said, holding up her hand in a stilted wave.
‘Yes,’ he said, and a smile flashed across his face, not the infuriating unreadable one, but something thinner and tired. He looked curiously frail as he walked briskly down the curving driveway, past the long row of shiny black limousines, before disappearing into the stream of traffic. The lights in this part of the city made the sky look pale and hazy, even at night.
‘Margaret,’ someone called out. It was Bill Schneider again. He did not have his girl with him this time. ‘I saw you leave and I thought, “She can’t be leaving us so quickly!”’
‘Well, I am leaving, Bill.’
‘Wait.’ When he smiled he showed off the top row of his perfect teeth. ‘You remember what we talked about last time we met…’
Margaret looked him in the eye then looked away. ‘Yes.’
‘And…?’
‘And what?’
‘Well,’ he paused. ‘We need to know what you…think.’
She did not answer. A steady stream of limousines drew up before them; the revving of the engines and the exhaust fumes made her feel sick, and the whistling of the doormen rang sharply in her ears and made her incipient headache grow worse. She wanted to go home.
He stood watching her, not saying anything. Margaret felt he was prepared to stay there all night, waiting for her to answer, but in the end he said, ‘I’m sorry. This is not a good place to speak. You sure you won’t come back inside for one more beer? No, you’re tired, of course. Look, come by and see me in my office. Soon.’ He handed her a folded-up newspaper. She saw the same smiling badminton player she had noticed earlier in the day, one half of his face disappearing into a crease. Bill leant over to kiss her on the cheek. ‘Come soon, Margaret.’
‘Taxi, madam?’ asked the doorman.
‘No thanks, I’ll walk for a while.’ She went down to the road and stood watching the swirling traffic before her, assailed by the pleading cries of the child beggars and the shrill calls of the boys and girls lined up on the other side of the road. It hurt Margaret to look at them, so she turned away, trying to pretend that the noise was something mechanical and inhuman. The city had never seemed so enormous, so overwhelming, so chaotic, and its enormous overwhelming chaos was growing worse every day. Not wishing to walk any longer, she hailed a taxi that stank of clove smoke; She unfolded the newspaper and looked at the front page. Bill’s handwriting – a surprisingly elegant cursive – read: Page 5: PS Great to see you again. B
She flicked through the pages. More protests in Europe against the imprisonment of Mandela.