"I can't believe he showed up here with a bottle of wine and we were just talking about him," she says.
Not only can you not believe it but you are mortified. What possessed the man to show up on your door with and expensive bottle of Singapore wine? You added it to your ever growing liquor cabinet, next to the remainders of last weekend's bottle of vodka also courtesy of the Sing businessman, and commence worrying.
This morning you woke up happy to see the blue canvas on your wall and mostly you wanted to stay home with some music and write and draw and paint. But your roommate was exuberant about your planned kayak trip so, even though adik canceled on you at the last minute, you put your bathing suit on under your clothes and head out into the humidity to try and find your way to Barelang.
Your roommate gets off the bus too soon and you follow her deciding this might be a happy accident because you might be going the wrong way. You ask several people, none of whom can understand your anglicized pronunciation.
"Oh, Berlin? Hotel Berlin?" one man suggests helpfully.
Finally you hop into an empty bus van, white with Bambir painted on the side in blue and red, and keep heading to Nagoya Hill.
A man gets on and starts speaking to you in English.
"Do you know if there is a bus to take to Barelang?" you ask hopefully.
He asks the bus driver and his skinny blue shirted cashman.
"Oh no!," The man finally tells you. "It's very far to Barelang. Maybe 100 kms. Too far. No bus."
"Is it possible to take the bus to closer to Barelang, then take ojek?" You ask.
He tosses you a look to let you know that you are gila, but he asks the driver.
"No, no ojek!" he says again, a little impatiently this time. "Too far. Too too far."
Then bus stops and the three of you are kicked out onto the curb. Your head is aching. sweat is dripping down your back, you wish you were asleep but you have to walk another two blocks up the Hill. Any determination you may have had to get there the local way is cascading from your pores and when you finally crawl into the air conditioned cab you are relieved, if a little worried you may not have brought enough money. After thirty minutes, just as the taksi pulls of the highway and onto the red dirt road you spot the white van with Bambir painted on the side in blue and red and the blue shirted cash man hanging out the side door.
The drive through the verdant rainforest is inda and Barelang bridge calls to your mind the bridges of Budapest from one of your past lives.
Melur beach, when you finally arrive, is packed and the moment you step out of the car children start calling excitedly to their parents "Bule, bule!"
The cab driver has parked at the opposite end of the kayak shack and you and your roommate must navigate through the crowds, smiling and nodding and waving at the people who call out to you and each other to spread the news that there are bule coming through.
The kayaks are 20,000 rupiah for 2 hours or about $1 an hour, 10% of what you paid at Nongsa a few weekends earlier and you are so excited you don't even try to barter the price down. When your kayak is finally loaded and your paddle slices the water your head begins to clear, your heart begins to hum and a school of blue silver fish make a synchronized leap from under your kayak and into the air. You feel joyful again.
Forty minutes later you have made the crossing and landed on the empty beach of an island. Your island. Your roommate and you claim it the way all white people everywhere stake their territory. You give it a name. You make plans to improve it. Next time you will bring a garbage bag to clean up the trash. Next time you will bring books, and snacks and hopefully adkik to teach you bahasa. This time a beautiful bird with shimmering blue, red and gold plumage flies overhead to hide in the rainforest behind you.
It's hard to go back to the city but once you're there you show your roommate the kampong then set off to find Batam's only Mexican restaurant.
As you jalang jalang you stumble on a traditional market and make fast acquaintance with the vegetable sellers there who all want you to take their pictures.
You walk towards a crowd gathering in the square and find a man with a drum and a monkey with bicycle. Like a bad accident you want to look away but your camera just keeps flashing.
The Mexican restaurant eludes you tonight and you settle on a busy restaurant across from the parsel.
You order the ayam penyet to avoid any question of tepung but your rommie goes for the bakso mie. When her order comes right away, it is noodles in soup broth with a gelatinous grey ball and ...
"Chicken feet!" her face turns ashen and you think she might hurl.
"No it isn't," you try to reassure her but you've watched acquaintances here eat chicken heads so you are quite certain it is even before she shows you.
"Focus on the noodles," you coax but she's barely keeping her empty stomach from jumping out her throat. Eventually she manages to eat the noodles.
"Sorry for not waiting for you but I'm really hungry."
"No problem at all. Best to eat it while it's hot," you tell her.
" Yeah, nothing worse than cold feet," she says.
When you finally make it home, adik comes over. You turn on the music, break out the three remaining single servings of chardonnay and adik, the roommate and you draw on your walls and talk about adik's so far fruitless job search, Inuit throat singing and Indonesian hoti hoti vs. North American hotties. They tease you mercilessly about your Singapore admirer whose gifted wine remains unopened on your desk.
"She made me go to the door and there he was asking, "Is she home? I brought her a bottle of wine." and when I said "Yes" I could hear her groaning in the kitchen so he must have heard. When he asked what we were doing she said staying in, when he gave her the bottle of wine she took it, said thank you and closed the door in his face."
You protest but that's pretty close to the truth. You told him maybe next weekend. He told you to text him. You said you would. You knew you wouldn't. But now you can't bring yourself to drink the bottle; guilt tastes like swill no matter how fine the wine.
You spend Sunday morning glancing nervously towards the alcohol cabinet. You no longer know if you will text him or not but you decide, when the bottle is empty, you will write a note. You will place it in the bottle, walk down to the waterfront and throw it in. You wonder if the person who finds it will be able to read English and if they do, even then, will they understand?
gila - crazy
inda- beautiful landscape
jalang - road
jalang jalang - walking
parsel - market
bakso- meatball
mie- noodles/ with bakso it's like Indonesian spaghetti and meatballs
hoti hoti - warning/ attention/ be careful
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