A Death in Bali. Nancy Tingley
my hand, he used exactly the same pressure he had used when I was eight years old and he was twelve. When his fingers wrapped around mine, electricity ran through me, not a shock or a jolt, rather like a circuit being completed. Was this why I returned? Not my work, my passion for art, my curiosity, my research of these paintings, but a man?
“I need to—” I began to pull the sack out of my pocket to give to him.
“Come,” he said, pulling me along, each step stripping my resolve to return the amulet. “We must hurry. She must not see him.”
“But I want to—” He didn’t listen, his attention on the sounds outside.
As he led me out of the living room, through the hall and out the antique carved front door, memories of that time twenty-odd years ago coursed through me, visceral and unformed. Tyo and his siblings. My brother and me. Tag, hide and go seek, kids strung together in a tug of war. My hand in his. A tear escaped my eye, muddying my vision so that I tripped over the bottom step. He steadied me without turning his eyes from the scene before us. He didn’t acknowledge my distress in any other way.
She was thrashing and screaming violently while two young policemen held her arms and tried to calm her. Her words came out in short, venomous bursts of anger. I had no idea what she was saying, but guessed that she was cursing them. Her hair had fallen out of its fastener. It hung over her shoulders and across her eyes and fell down to her narrow waist. Dropping the sack into my pocket, I ran my free hand through my short hair.
She was very beautiful, as most Balinese women seem to be. Both her face and her thin, fragile body belied the strength she displayed as she struggled with the two policemen. She wore traditional Balinese dress, sarong, sash, and the long-sleeved blouse called a kebaya. One of her rubber flip-flops had fallen off in the struggle. Her bag now lay on the ground at her feet. Suddenly she leaned back and looked toward us, her mouth opened for another burst of obscenity, but at the sight of me, or maybe of Wayan Tyo, no words came. She stared at me as if in a nightmare and sagged, so that now they didn’t need to restrain her, but to support her.
“Ulih, Ulih. You must not go in there.” Wayan Tyo let go of me and approached her. “He is gone.”
The policemen released her and she fell to her knees. “Tidak, tidak, tidak,” was all she could say. No, no, no. She began to sob quietly, her head bent to the ground, all that beautiful glossy hair spilling around her and twining in the groundcover that wove through the stones of the path. Without her to support, the policemen no longer knew where to put their hands. Wayan Tyo knelt at her side.
Flip’s death was a loss that shifted her life. Who were they to each other? If I had to guess, I would say he was her beloved.
Ulih’s heartrending sobs joined those of the mourners inside the house, and I realized that though his death angered me and I would search for his killer, it was not personal. I’d stood over his body and tried to recreate the crime. I’d escaped from the reality of a dead body into the intellectual exercise, the whys and wherefores. I looked down at my hand; it was shaking. Maybe I was in shock.
Ulih unfolded herself from the ground and from Wayan Tyo’s gentle words. She picked up her bag and asked, “Who is she?”
“She found him. She has just arrived and came to talk with him about business. She never met him.”
She turned back to go down the gaily bordered path, welcoming and at odds with the surfeit of distraught emotion. She shifted the bag from her arm onto her head, steadying it as she walked. The lush grounds and the exotic woman created a scene right out of a glossy guidebook. To the right, in the northeast corner of the property, the household shrine was laden with offerings, sacred water, woven containers resting on textiles, flowers.
It was all very pretty. I’d arrived in paradise. Or had I?
Sirens were sounding. People were gathering at the gate.
“Tyo, I need to—” I fingered the sack.
“Not now, Jenna. I’m busy here. This officer will take you back to the station for questioning.” He distractedly directed the arriving officers toward Flip’s living room.
“Aren’t you going to question me? And why do I need to be questioned? I arrived, the servant took me to the living room, and we found the body.”
“Yes.” He turned to a young man who was carrying two heavy bags. “Leave the one out here. There’s no room for all that.”
People were pressing up to the gate. An elderly woman the size of a child had entered and was toddling up the walk. “Get her out of here,” Tyo yelled to the officer by the gate, who had been too respectful of his elders to do more than scold her gently as she entered.
I pulled the sack out of my pocket. “Tyo, I need to—”
“Really, Jenna. We can talk tomorrow. You will come to my mother’s house for dinner, and we can talk then.”
“I think it’s better if . . .” I wanted to give him the sack. I wanted to turn back time and stop myself from taking it.
He said to one of the officers who had held up Ulih, “Take her down to the station and have Nyoman question her. Tell him that she was the one who found the body.”
I was beginning to panic and tried to catch his eye. “I want you to question me.” He didn’t answer. “Please, Tyo.”
Exasperated, he said, “Tomorrow. We’ll talk tomorrow.” And he turned and walked into the house.
“I need to speak with you in private,” I called out and started to follow, but the officer who was to take me to the police station stepped belligerently between us.
I felt abandoned. Annoyed. I fingered the outline of the small figure in the sack. Angry. At Tyo for not listening to me. But more at myself for taking the thing. As we walked toward the gate, I considered dropping the sack on the ground, but the thirty or forty people who had gathered to watch the excitement would see, and really, I wanted to give it to Tyo. To explain to Tyo what had been going through my mind when I’d taken it.
What had I been thinking?
I looked back at the chaos of the crime scene. At least a dozen people milled around the front yard. How many more were in the house, I didn’t know. But they were walking everywhere, through the garden, around the pool.
The officer said, “Come,” and tugged at my elbow, gently at first, but when I still didn’t move, more forcefully.
“Just a minute. What are they doing? Why aren’t they trying to find footprints? Trying to preserve the scene as it was when I arrived?”
He looked toward his colleagues and shrugged.
“They don’t know what they’re doing,” I said.
“We do not have murders in Ubud,” he said, as if that excused their behavior. They did have TV, and everyone who had TV knew what you should do at a crime scene. You should wear white booties on your feet, a mask on your face. “Come.”
“Did she do it?” someone called out as we pushed through the crowd.
“No,” he said.
But when I got to the police station, you would have thought otherwise. They took my prints and photographed and questioned me as if I were their number one suspect.
3
Walking numbly away from the police station, I tried to find balance. I’d been thrown by Flip’s lifeless body. By meeting Tyo. By my own foolish action.
The one positive thing that had happened in the station was that they hadn’t frisked me. If they’d found the sack, I would probably be in a cell. I wasn’t a thief. I wasn’t a criminal. But I was impulsive. I shook my head. I had to give the sack to Tyo—though after seeing the way the police were acting at the crime scene, I doubted they would ever find the killer.
What