A Death in Bali. Nancy Tingley

      9

      Sightseeing had been fun, the motorbikes challenging in the uncertain traffic. Now I needed to use my muscles, to wear myself out, so that exhaustion would vanquish the bloody scenes of last night’s dreams and today’s imaginings. I said good-bye to Seth and Randall and traded in motorbike for bicycle. I wasn’t due for dinner for another hour, so I took a roundabout route to Wayan Tyo’s mother’s house. I pedaled hard. The setting sun vanished as I flew down one hill, then reappeared, playing peek-a-boo, as I topped the next.

      The Balinese orient themselves mountain to sea, with the mountains the more auspicious direction. No island of sailors, the Balinese. Whether their antipathy to the sea is because their shoreline has few natural harbors or out of fear of the water is difficult to say. On the other hand, I thought as I tried to catch my breath, the mountains may be the reason few people in Bali ride bicycles.

      Wayan Tyo had left Ani’s address and directions at my hotel. He’d also left his mobile number in case I wanted a ride. Once in her neighborhood, I had to ask a couple of people directions, as the Balinese seem disinclined to number their homes.

      Arriving, I was surprised to discover I didn’t recognize the house. I thought that I had remembered it, but maybe I was recalling the bungalow where my family had stayed that summer years before. I zigzagged through the entrance into the compound, as there was the usual wall blocking direct access, a deterrent to malevolent forces. Demons only walk in straight lines.

      As I came through the gate, children ran up to greet me yelling, Mimpi, Mimpi. Puzzled, I wondered if they mistook me for someone else, maybe another guest who was supposed to come to dinner tonight. The children waited for me to lock the bike by the central gate, and as soon as I took off my helmet, a small boy grabbed it and put it on his head. They screamed with glee.

      A girl about seven grasped my right hand, and when her younger sister, a tiny clone of the older girl, saw her hand in mine, she clung to my left. When she looked up, her perfect face shimmered, the mouth slightly parted, the eyes wide and eager. I picked her up and planted her on my hip. My one-year-old nephew weighed more than this three-year-old girl.

      A woman grasping a large handful of green leafy vegetables came around the side of the house toward me. “They are very excited to meet you,” she said.

      “Bu,” I said.

      “Ani, you always called me Ani,” said Wayan Tyo’s mother, grasping both my upper arms in greeting, the greens resting on my shoulder. She looked at my auburn hair with its lock of pink and gazed into my eyes for an instant before she smiled. “Come over here to the kitchen, then we will join the others.”

      “You look different than I remember.”

      “You look different too.”

      I laughed. “Twenty years will do that.” The summer we’d stayed in Ubud, she had probably been about my age. Very beautiful, her long hair draped around her shoulders, her attention on young children, full of pleasure at their exuberance. Now, standing before me, the vague, idealized person of my imaginings slipped away. She had thickened and her hair was bound. Her slight limp when she walked and her gesture a moment before, grasping my arms, gave rise to a little burst of memory. No, not memory, a feeling of contentment difficult to correlate with the gesture, a contentment I’d felt when she’d looked into my eyes.

      “What do you think?” I asked.

      “The same. I believe you are the same.”

      “And what is that?” I laughed.

      “Mischievous, quick in your mind and your actions, hurrying from this to that. Impulsive.”

      “That’s how you remember me?” I smiled at the pleasure of being known.

      She laughed. “That’s how you were.”

      The kitchen was just to the right of the doorway, just as bade, pavilions for preparing offerings, stood just inside the entrance to temples. I assumed there was a correlation. It was a small kitchen, with a grill outside, and I waited while she put the greens on a table and said something in Balinese to a woman working at a burner. Then she led me to the main house, which lay at the back of the compound. Smaller buildings had blocked my view of it, and I wondered what each of them held as we walked across the tamped earth to a large, sheltering tree and the family who sat chatting or running around, depending on their ages. “I remember the tree,” I blurted out.

      “Why didn’t you come to us as soon as you arrived? You and your family were our first guests in our bungalow. Our longest and happiest guests. You are welcome with us.”

      “My mother lost your address about ten years ago, along with some other important papers, when my parents moved. She tried writing to you using just your names, but never received a response, which I suppose means you never received the letters. All I had was your name. My plan was to try to find you, though I hadn’t figured out how.”

      My mother had pressed their names on me and tried to describe the relationship of their house to the center of town. But I didn’t know whether I would have followed through on the search. Even while talking to my parents about the trip, I had already been making mental excuses as to why I hadn’t been able to track down Ani’s family. My memories of them were dim, and after all these years I had no idea how they would greet me.

      One of the young men seated on the far side of the courtyard rose at my entry. “Sister,” he said. Thus began my introductions to the entire extended family. The group seemed to expand and shrink before my eyes, and consisted of at least fifteen people—children and grandchildren, a great-uncle. They greeted me, went in and out of the house, the children ran amok, all was lively. Ani’s husband, Wayan Tyo’s father, was nowhere to be seen, but his brothers and their wives and children had all congregated to meet me and to dine.

      One young man hung back until Ani called him over. “This is Esa, Wayan Tyo’s close friend.”

      I stretched out my hand, but he didn’t take it, ducking his head slightly instead and taking an almost imperceptible step back.

      “He is wary of foreigners. Don’t worry, he will warm to you,” said Ani, laughing.

      “Why are you wary?” I asked him.

      He seemed to consider the question. Finally he said, “Memory. History. The past.”

      Before I could think of how to respond, Ani bundled me over to the cluster of wives who had shyly moved in my direction. One asked, “Where is your husband?”

      “I don’t have a husband.”

      She and her sister-in-law exchanged glances.

      “You have met my family,” said Wayan Tyo as he came out of the largest of the buildings. He laughed as he saw the two young girls clinging to me. “And my daughters.”

      The older girl still grasped my hand. The younger had laid her head on my shoulder; a tiny hand caressed my neck. The electrical surge I had felt when Wayan Tyo touched me the previous day now jolted me through his children’s hands. I tried to let go, but the older girl was permanently attached and the younger fitted me like a scarf. He came down the few steps, shooed the one away, and tried to take the other, but gave up.

      “Oh, these are your children,” I said. It hadn’t occurred to me that he had children. Of course he had children. “I don’t think I met your wife.”