The Girl from Ambonia

The little girl's face told of hardships. She was a dark and dirty brown, not tanned so much as scorched. It was the impeccable tan of the homeless - a combination of relentless sun and dust from the end of the road. Her frock was some kind of faded orange with equally faded small red flowers. These two once-vivid colours combined to form a shabby browny-grey. Her hair was matted, jet black and uneven. Her teeth were a disorganized mix of new and old, each apparently still fighting for supremacy in her delicate mouth. She wore no shoes and, by the wide, flat brown feet on show, I guessed she never had. The soles were black, dust clinging to tar clinging to dark, rough skin.

She was beautiful.

As she came close I noticed the frock was damp. She had been playing in the sea, jumping from the nearby sea wall where sinister crabs scuttled along the sleek black stones. Her face was turned up to me, her features fine, accentuated by the fading sun. Her smile completely took over her face in the totally unabashed way that seems to only be found the further we go from what we call civilization. She looked too young to have adult teeth but there they were, glowing against the dark face which in turn glowed out of the rapidly-approaching darkness. The sun sets fast this far East.

In the distance, a single red light hovered above a sleek silhouette. As the small boat approached, her shyness disappeared as she tugged at my shorts. I looked down. "Meesterr! One please," she said. A finger extended towards me to emphasize the point, just in case she had selected the wrong words. As I looked down at her, she smiled in a slightly coquettish way. I marvelled at the way the female package came so complete so young. She knew instinctively that she could influence me and she knew how to do it. My attention was drawn to the nearby group boys. They were her age, possibly some were her brothers or cousins or classmates. Together we watched them pushing, shoving and wrestling nearby. They wanted the same as she did. But while they focussed their attention on forcibly establishing a pecking order, here was their contemporary - a girl with hands clasped together, head upturned, eyelids fluttering, smile unwavering - silently wrapping the main man (me) around her little finger. I was powerless and instantly took her hand in mine. As we walked to the end of the jetty, I looked down at her and said "No problem." We both smiled for our own reasons out towards the darkening horizon.

As we progressed to the edge of the jetty, the male frenzy behind us was intensifying. The red light still hovered but was now close enough so that the speedboat to which it was attached could clearly be seen. Two dark figures now became apparent as well as the distinctive shape of their cargo. The crowd seemed to see this as one and surged, squeezed, receded and surged again towards it like a human tide.

A dark, skinny man with a ragged t-shirt tied around his head had fought his way to the front. But alas, too soon. He was immediately shoved in the back so that he almost fell into the inky black waters. He quickly regained his balance and simultaneously spun around to attack the culprit. As he raised his elbows to do so, a shorter man slipped under them and made it to the front of the pack and the whole process began again. Silently we watched, myself and the little girl, a few meters off to the side. She held my hand, wrapping hers around my first two fingers and clasping them tightly. I watched the crowd squabble with detached amazement, as men will often do. She watched me with a fierce determination, as women will often do.

The speedboat was now only ten meters from the dock. The crowd intensified now, threatening to become a riot. The men in the boat looked nervously at me - even in this light I saw the tight lips and furrowed brows. Their white skin shimmered in the moonlight making them look cold and important. To the dark-skinned masses writhing on the dock they were the most important two men in their world at that moment. Women shrieked, men squabbled, boys wrestled. All the time the little girl stood calmly at my side. Her head was tilted upwards gazing at me,towering above her. Her mouth was fixed in the smile that brought out her beauty from beneath the layers of dust and filth.

"Mark!" I shouted, clear as a bell over the howls and growls of the crowd. The driver of the boat looked up, saw me, visibly relaxed and steered towards my end of the jetty. The crowd was so pre-occupied in the pushing, grabbing, shouting and elbowing that they barely noticed the boat had veered away. Only those on the outside of the ruck noticed. But they were nothing but stragglers. Those in the middle were the nerve-centre of the mob and they were engaged in the internal fight for ascendency. The boat and her cargo, the very thing for which they were fighting, had been forgotten.

"Jesus mate, what a rabble," said Mark as I took the line.

"Just give me one of those quick," I said, "and then get ready for this lot."

Bruno, at the back of the boat reached over and handed us the first piece of cargo. As he did, we all simultaneously sensed the same thing. The mob was advancing as one. I saw Mark's nervous glance and noticed his hand on the throttle. I met his gaze with the most reassuring look I could muster.

Those next few seconds seemed to last a long time and even today are frozen as a series of still snapshots in my mind. I play them through like a slideshow but it is not the continuous motion of other memories, only a series of images. This is highlighted by the fact that the memory has no sound attached to it, as I play it back. I remember the moment in absolute silence which is impossible due to the noise of the crowd and the idling speedboat engine. But it exists in its own perfect vacuum.

I turned, bent slightly and extended my arms to her. The little girl's arms were splayed wide, fingers apart. She clamped both arms around the precious gift and immediately hugged it to her chest. It was as wide as she was but she held it tight. Her eyes met mine and instantly I was overpowered by the love and gratitude in their tiny, sparking black depths. My heart tumbled and expanded within my chest. A warmth rushed over me and through me. There was a moment of purity, a connection between two human spirits, somewhere way beyond the physical world. Something so simple transcended life's general scheme.

It was as she turned away that the volume was suddenly switched back on. A wall of sound preceded the moving jumble of arms, legs, heads and eyes. The look on the little girl's face turned from joy to panic. I saw her hug the prize tightly before she vanished into the pack, like a blade of grass disappearing under a lawn mover.

I stood, motionless, unable to do anything, awaiting the outcome. The mob was stationary now but expanding and contracting on the spot, as if pausing to devour its prey. The sides undulated, the noise rose. I saw elbows stick out, heads bob up and down, pushing and pulling. All I could think of was a pack of Hyenas at a wildebeest carcass.

Suddenly, I caught a glimpse of the dusty orange dress. Then I saw a hand on the ground between two thick, black legs. The arm to which the hand was attached was concealed by long black hair which hung down over it. Then, gradually, the little girl crawled out from between the hindmost legs of the mob. She looked even more disheveled than before. As she stood up, I saw the torn piece of cardboard in her hand. It was all that remained of her gift. The empty cardboard box I had given her - the prize for which she had waited patiently and for which the mob had engulfed her - was torn to shreds. Whatever she had intended to do with that box was never going to happen now. Her gift was gone and my heart sank with it. Even possessing something so simple as an empty cardboard box was an impossible dream for her.

The little girl straightened, and blew her hair from her eyes. As she did, she saw me standing helplessly looking on. With her eyes burning brighter than ever, she met my gaze. She looked down at the sorry scrap of cardboard left in her hand. Her head rose, our eyes met and she looked back at me with the greatest joy imaginable. She smiled the biggest smile I have ever seen and shouted "Thank you meesterr!" before turning and running barefoot away down the dusty road.

Alone again, I turned to face the mob.

First Light

The Old Man sits and impassively waits. Darkness coats him with an inky blackness, damp and heavy, blended with the morning mist. The Old Man’s skin, baked under a thousand suns, exudes its own mortal sheen and glows supernaturally out of the darkness as the moonlight catches the angles of his gaunt shoulders. He is naked except for a sarong, roughly tied at his waist, its greys and blues dulled by years of dust, water and sweat. It is as much a part of him as the dark strands of hair – some jet black, others as white as rice – which still grow luxuriantly from the centre of his head. His scythe, its blade dull to the eye yet sharp to the touch, is tucked into his waistband as it has been for his entire life. The carved wooden handle is worn with grooves exactly matching the Old Man’s fingers. The cool blue atmosphere touches his parched skin and he exhales gently.

Darkness fades, as darkness does, into lighter hues of blues colliding softly with gently glowing greys. Without warning or announcement, the lightest tinge of orange emerges around the corners of the sky. It is as if the giant canvas above him is suddenly alight, burning from the edges inwards. Backlit whisps of cloud drift across the foreground of this primal painting, barely visible yet always present, like the spirits surrounding the Old Man as he sits motionless. They swirl around him. They accompany him each morning and throughout each day, their shape constantly changing, their form neither solid nor air; they are equally visible and invisible, apparently real yet remaining untouchable by human hand. The Old Man anticipated the day when he would once again assume this form and a warmth of contentment washed over him, in perfect tune with the growing orange warmth of the horizon.

Absently, he scents smoke as it drifts across the rice padi. Chaff is burning damply upwind. Smoke - that dark prince born of noble fire - is carried on the morning breeze. It twists like a serpent, fading in colour from thick black to ghostly grey as it stalks through the fields, camouflaged by the darkness of the dawn. By the time it reaches the nostrils of the Old Man, it has no colour, no form or being. Only existence. Its presence is unmistakable, totally intangible, undeniably real. The smoke snakes thinly into his nostrils, through his body and out of his mouth. It hangs in the air, surrounding him briefly as if wondering whether to strike. Sinisterly it encircles him, like a boa on a jungle limb, before silently passing through him to continue its ever-diminishing journey towards the sea.

The wind is coming from the north and it whispers in the ear of the Old Man. The monsoon will end before long, it tells him. The Old Man feels a twinge deep in his heart. He has been in love with the monsoon his whole life ever since the first time he saw her – he, a wide-eyed child, peaking from beneath the low alang-alang roof into the blackness; she, at first a distant rumor, a murmur, arriving dramatically to the sound of ten thousand million drums.

She swept in each year, as wild and beautiful as ever. She never fully revealed herself to him but remained a strange beauty from a place he did not know. The Old Man had admired her for many years but she didn’t seem to know him. She would knock on his door but when he answered, she had danced away.

 Sometimes a white flash announced her presence, blinding at first, revealing a glimpse of the beautifully layered sheets of her dress, swishing and twirling in the vicious wind. The thunder, he always knew, was the sound of her shoes as she danced across the land. He craned his head to see upwards but only blackness stretched to the heavens. His vantage point meant that he only saw the bottom of her dress, as if he was watching a wedding dance from beneath a table. The silky sheets of fabric moved in so many directions it made his head spin. He wondered what the face of such a beautiful princess must look like and he dared not imagine. The westerly wind, this strong, powerful Sultan would dance with her, whipping her into a frenzy on occasion. When they were together, the passion was so strong it engulfed everybody below. They moved together in such perfect harmony. It was a joy to behold and the Old Man would sit and watch with the same awe and wonderment as the Boy he had once been. The dance was never the same and he never grew tired of its splendor.

Then the northerly wind would blow and she would dance no more. Occasionally she would return with the westerly wind but their dances became more and more fleeting – their intensity magical but their duration unsustainable. He knew she would soon be moving on to dance her mesmeric dance elsewhere.

As these loving thoughts drifted through the Old Man’s mind, the darkness around him had thinned. It was warmed by the slightest tinge of orange, barely visible at first, but soon there appeared a slash of it above the sea: a paint-splash of orange and red and violet. Blues gave way to reds with grace, their coldness melting away as the minutes passed.

The light was sufficient now for his eyes to see the land before him. His eyes presented a picture in which his heart found easy comfort. He had grown with this land, sprouted from its rich soils. His spirit, warmed each day by the sunlight, arose and awakened within him. As a child knows every hair on his father’s head, each mark on its mother’s body, he knew every inch of this land. In the gentle morning light now he greeted each shoot as a sibling. His entire universe lay before him and his ease and contentment were absolute.

This land had fed him, clothed him, nourished him, loved him. To his right was the banana palm - his nanny - in whose shaded arms he had slept as a child. From her cool shadows he had gazed in loving wonder as sweat rolled in rivulets from the bodies of his parents into the thirsty soil below.

At the intersection of two fields some thirty meters distant, was the crooked wooden sala where he had first kissed a girl from his village. They had waited for the night when the moon was old and had sneaked into the sala from opposite sides of the fields. The darkness cloaked them so completely that only the warmth of their breath and the beating of their hearts guided them. It was a moment so beautifully locked in time, woven into the richness of his life just as a single golden thread stands out in even the most colorful ikat tapestry.

Beyond the sala was the path he had later walked, hand in hand with the same girl, on the day when she became his wife. He had stood and proudly showed her the fields that one day soon they would tend together. Later, their children had slept in the arms of that same kindly banana palm while he and his wife sweated in the sun, nourishing the soil who, in turn, dutifully responded by feeding their growing family. 

Many years later, this same soil had soaked up the sorrow of his tears as he cast his wife’s ashes onto the land that had sustained them both through hard and happy years. From his tears - and her ashes - sprouted more crops, which the Old Man joyfully harvested. As he did, he accepted that the next time this soil tasted tears, they would be the tears of his son. And the soft black flakes that fell among those tears would be the ashes of his own being.

Day by day, he swayed with the winds, absorbed the light and the water he was given, never asking nor expecting more. ‘More’ was an abstract notion to the Old Man. It was the curse of other men. He simply accepted what he was given at the dawn of each day. He awoke in the rising sun, regenerated, grew again, flowered, gave seed, grew old, wilted and, finally, lay down as the sun sank into the ocean. When his time came, this cycle would be broken. A distant day was marked on a cosmic calendar when he would not rise with the sun in the form of a man but simply return to the soil whilst his spirit soared, uninhibited by gravity and time. His ashes would mix with the tears of the Boy, colouring the soil with their inky blackness. And life would begin again.

Every dawn, the Old Man sat with the darkness in perfect peace. When the darkness left, he never felt loss. They were never really together, the Old Man and the darkness. They shared a moment in time and space, but could never escape the constant motion of the universe. “Darkness, my old friend,” thought the Old Man, “the one thing we have in common is that from the very moment we arrive, we are at once engaged in the process of leaving.”

The Old Man looked at his hands. They had served him well. In this light, they may as well have been carved from teak, such was their bony elegance. ‘They will burn well when the day comes’, the Old Man thought, grinning toothlessly to himself. A dog wandered past lazily, shabby white fur alight with the fiery orange of the early-morning sun. People were cooking. The Old Man hears the noises of life, soft and soothing; the village is awakening. The Old Man stands, raises his eyes and thanks God for sending him another perfect day.

An Introduction to Whispers From The Plantations

I don't take photos.

Well, sometimes I do. But generally they are terrible and I am left wishing I hadn't desecrated the moment with my inability to capture it as I had perceived it. Instead, I have always preferred to witness things through the dual viewfinders on the front of my face. I can zoom in and pan out, capturing and developing the images in my mind before relaying them to others in the form of words. I have just always been that way. Perception is just the human version of Photoshop - images can be manipulated, altered and cropped by our internal processors.

Even photos we see must, at some stage be translated into words in order for us to be able to experience and interpret them. When we see a photograph, we make our decisions based on the colours we see. Blue sky: warm, beautiful, happy. Brooding black clouds: stormy, cold, scary. So we break images down into words to be able to feel them.  For example, you can look at thousands of beautiful pictures of waves and surfers on them. But can you ever imagine what it feels like? Unlikely. With the help of words, this experiential gap narrows whilst, of course, never closing completely. The point being that what we see is just what we see. Our perception of it lies in what words we choose to apply to what we are looking at. I have always relied on my words to portray my experiences (much to the frustration of more visually-minded individuals!).

Whispers From The Plantations is an ongoing project of essays and short stories borne from my travels around Indonesia, this strange and beautiful archipelago, held together only by the spirit - and spirituality - of its inhabitants. The unusual is an everyday occurrence, observed through my incredulous eyes. A rich host of characters, a constantly rotating cast, moves effortlessly from comedy to tragedy in the blink of an eye. Beautiful experiences flutter like butterflies past my nose, constantly evading my grasp as I struggle to get a closer look. They fly away but the beauty of the moment remains, sustaining me through the horrors waiting to be revealed at the next turn. It is an ever-shifting landscape of such moments, often so fleeting they can escape the shutter of even the most diligent camera. But not the blink of an eyelid. As I register these moments, I often ponder the backstory to them. What happened to that guy's arm? Why was that little girl so hungry? How can that old man smoke like that and still be so fit? They are all discoveries, wonderful stories waiting to be revealed and retold.

Whispers From The Plantations is my own voyage of discovery, my own wonder at the visions which dart through my consciousness like snapshots framed in the window of a speeding train. Are my perceptions reality? I have no way of knowing. But I hope to be able to capture those perceptions and display them here as a means of proving to myself, if nothing else, that they existed - if only in a fleeting moment of time.

I hope, in that that way, that these stories will in turn perpetuate as stories in your own consciousness, coloured by your own perceptions and enhanced by the filters of your mind. They are, after all, merely perceptions and exist purely in your own individual reality.

RMC Lofthouse
22 March 2011