By Linda Christanty
I want to see the lighthouse—something I’ve dreamt of doing for a long time. I mention it to her, speaking the way an archaeologist would when spreading out a map of an ancient site and pointing out the location of the dig.
I’ve failed in many attempts to get to the lighthouse, but now I just have to make it. She only says “oh” in response to every one of my sentences, which I finish on a rising note. Maybe I’m being overly enthusiastic. Maybe she thinks what I’m saying is nothing special. I watch the tide beginning to erode the beach as the sun gradually moves to the west.
The lighthouse has significance for me but not in the sense of having some close family connection with it (she continues to respond with “oh”.) I don’t have a great-grandfather who built it or was the lighthouse keeper or anything. They were all definitely nowhere near the coast.
It’s just some sort of blind obsession that haunts me every time I think about the word ‘lighthouse’. For years the lighthouse has been hiding away and growing beautiful at the back of my mind, like the brown body of a tropical woman who has become a foreigner and never returned home. Only last week I finally got to see what this century-old structure looked like, on a picture postcard Chen had sent me. It was certainly not as elegant as I’d thought it would be. Upright, soaring, forbidding. Before I saw Chen’s postcard I used to imagine that the lighthouse would be like a fortress or an old castle on the headland. This time she says “oh,” nodding her head sympathetically.
She, this new acquaintance of mine, also has a thing about the lighthouse, triggered by a tourist advertisement in a newspaper. She likes anything that’s isolated but performs an important service, like most scientists or inventors. The lighthouse guides ships, standing alone, and I think its position can more accurately be compared to a prophet in relation to his community. You agree? She’s shocked. She doesn’t believe in God, let alone prophets. Religion only has one good thing about it: to discriminate. “So your first reason was fine, no need to make religious comparisons,” she snipes. Yes, fine, I apologize. I feel like I’ve overstepped the mark. Anyway this is the impetus that’s brought us to meet on the beach, although I’d just found out she’s a historian, and surely she has some academic reason for her interest in it. I also have other reasons, such as having been influenced by a novel of Mishima’s that made frequent references to lighthouses.
There were times when I wanted to be a ship, she says, so I could understand what it means to have the beam of light from the lighthouse’s 1000 watt lamp show me where the land is. I didn’t say anything. What’s the point of being a ship? You can’t kiss or play Jackpot.
At first she thought I was her friend Lonadera. To me Lonadera is a name that has no roots in our culture at all (to be honest, the name’s not exactly pure, more a mixture of Arabic coffee, Chinese noodles and Dutch spice cookies) and it feels like it’s been made up. Our? Had I dared to say “our”? Who am I representing? Sorry, I shouldn’t have spoken on behalf of a group of people who may not be okay about it. I retract my words.
I’m Hana, not Lona. I think she’s only pretending to mistake me for her, and the name “Lonadera” had come into her head at the very moment she caught a glimpse of me under the shade of the coconut palm, which is arched like a bow or like someone with a stomach disorder hunched over in pain. She’s obviously interested in me. That’s certain. Her gaze falls on me, darts off, falls on me again like a bee taking nectar from flowers. Lonadera … it’s like the name of a cake shop or a motel or maybe a bistro. It seems a long way from Halmahera.
After that she wants to borrow my cigarette lighter. Surely she’s got one of her own. Her gums are black, stained by nicotine. A heavy smoker without a lighter? What’s she playing at? No matter, I just go along with it, wherever it’s leading. I rummage around in my bag, feeling into the corners. My lighter’s lost. She’s aware of it, even ready to join in the search. “Let’s retrace our steps along the beach, if necessary from the path down onto it.” I pretend to understand, but I’m in a bit of a panic. My lighter is lost. We both drop the idea of a cigarette. My mouth tastes sour. She says hers does too.
A sea breeze suddenly blows up. We can smell a harsh, salty stench. Both the left and right pockets of my blue cargo pants are full of seashells and getting heavier. Her pitch-black hair (I just realized it’s dyed) is tied back in a ponytail. I still wear my hair in a crew cut, and due to my habit of dozing on the beach there are grains of sand sticking to my scalp like dandruff. I’m slightly disturbed to find a low split in the neckline of my tank top. She grins. I think, she’s enjoying herself and deliberately pushing me towards something more thrilling.
We each work out what we’re going to do, as if organizing a strategy. She wants to go straight to the lighthouse. Come on, I say, I’m up for it. She is too. So, to put it shortly, that’s where we head.
The lighthouse keeper is happy to take us around, and even happier when I give him a packet of local cigarettes. We climb the steps together but she stays one step behind.
The lighthouse keeper—who is two steps ahead of me—is a man whose body seems to have been designed specifically for the requirements of climbing up to high places. He has long legs to make it easy to reach each stone step. I notice that not only are his legs long but his arms are too. He’s like a monkey. I smile, imagining his long tail swinging. He goes on chattering about the ships that come and go and the behavior of the tame sea snakes that live in the coral. (For me, tame or wild, they’re equally creepy.) We gasp for breath as we follow him. The lighthouse might have been old but it’s sturdy, and like a lover faithfully waiting, it strives to avoid the flattery that might weaken its resolve. I’m not a faithful person. Chen knew that.
The lighthouse keeper thinks we’re sisters. You must be blind, I say, bursting out laughing. My saliva sprays everywhere. My laughter ricochets off the stone walls. It sounds weird and unreal, like the laugh of a wandering spirit on Friday night television. Your faces look alike, he says with conviction. I remain unconvinced. How’s it possible? We’re from different genes. We’ve just met because she needed to borrow my lighter, among other things. The lighthouse keeper turns his attention to her, seeking support. She is laughing too. Her laugh is the sweetest I’ve ever heard. Naida’s laugh was loud and harsh.
We arrive at the cramped space at the top. Almost two hundred mossy steps have brought us here. I look for a window. The air feels damp. There’s a faint warmth to the stone, coming from outside. I look at the horizon through the ventilation hole. More than a thousand lighthouses were built by the colonizers in the interests of trade. Who were the first people to look through this hole over a hundred years ago, I wonder. When I ask about this, the lighthouse keeper seems to give it some thought. Two parallel vertical lines are etched between the ends of his arched eyebrows. I’m overcome by guilt that somehow I’ve annoyed this man by having brought up something which is way outside his experience or knowledge. He doesn’t answer, and when we get to the bottom all he says is “thank you”.
We two tourists walk along the beach in silence, with the dusk swallowing the shadows of objects, the motionless and the moving, the living and the dead. The coconut palms are in rows. Our feet are covered with dry sand. Suddenly she asks me whether I have a lover. I answer no, not too many. She immediately pounces on my lips, at exactly the moment when a seagull plunges into the water to snatch up a fish with its beak, showing no mercy. My body flames. I feel like I’m burning up. This the way I do things, she says. She doesn’t like to waste any time.
That night I move to her hut. The pounding of the waves is faint here. There’s a double bed with a soft mattress covered in a pure white sheet. There’s also a rattan sofa covered with a piece of woven Lombok cloth (although this beach isn’t in Lombok). I fling myself onto the mattress. The perfume of the cloth penetrates my nostrils, but just for a moment. I suddenly get up and sit up straight on the edge of the bed. We’ll be sleeping together, we will be sleeping together … The thought makes me angry. For years I’ve been used to sleeping alone, ever since Naida went back to her husband, ever since she couldn’t bear to be separated any longer from her daughter, who was always there before me like a splat of chicken shit on the living room Persian carpet. Once I’d heard her daughter sneering behind my back: typical Chinese, prostitutes, pigs—she’s ruining my mother!
I think of my mother. She was a great at making cakes. When I had my eighth birthday Mum invited the neighbors’ kids in. But not one of them came. Eating my mother’s cakes was disgusting. “Hana’s mum’s cakes are made with pig fat,” they said. Their parents wouldn’t let them play with me because they thought our house was full of filth. “In Hana’s house there’s a big pig, right?” asked one of the kids who lived across the road from us—despite the fact Mum and Dad avoided food that contained blood from any creature that swam in the sea, lived on the land or flew through the air.
My gaze rushes to the rattan sofa beside the bathroom door. I plan to sleep on it because I’m not ready to lie down beside my new friend. I’m not ready to let her read my dreams, either in daylight or in darkness.
I take a gulp of sangria, a mixture of fruit juice and red wine which she has served up in porcelain cups. She’d set out a bowl of the drink on the table as if for a party. I drink, half in a daze. Who else is coming? She’s busy in the wardrobe, dragging out a big leather bag which seems to weigh a lot. Then I hear the jingling of metal. You sell antique chains, I joke. She laughs, or to be more precise, grins. Maybe she’s offended. It’s only then that I see her teeth. Tiny, white, pointy. I blink. Maybe it’s just a trick of the light I think, calming myself. Are you descended from werewolves? Are you a fox woman? She winks, with her left eye. My heart drops a fraction in my chest. “I’m a flesh eater—raw flesh,” she laughs. If that’s the case then we’re different because I’m a herbivore. I’m an animal that doesn’t care for meat.
She takes something out. I look at it closely while I go on holding my cup. A black cat mask. Then a whip. Hey, what’s that for? You can’t be serious! She grins again. This time her eyes gleam like jewels. Maybe it’s the lamplight, I tell myself. “We’re going to perform a ceremony,” she says evenly. When? In a while. If so, I want to have a wash first. I’m all sweaty and sticky. And I’m not too keen on ceremonies—there’re either stupid or evil.
I hated the routine ceremonies at school. I hated school, period. The students baking under the blazing sun to watch the flag being raised and lowered. What was the point of it all? On certain days, millions of people doing the same thing, being tortured by the flag. My father used to say the ceremony was an exercise in vigilance. You never know, we might be attacked by an enemy and have to go to war. Whose side would we be on? Which country?
This time she apologizes. She promises to erase the word ‘ceremony’ from her memory. To me this sort of behavior is over-the-top. But she insists. Up to you. She then proposes the condition: you can take a bath as long as I can see you naked. I refuse downright. If so, I’m willing to see just your silhouette through the opaque glass of the shower screen, she cajoles, not giving up. No way! Later, okay? I’m still not ready. Later. Finally she gives in. I’m not even prepared to sleep next to this woman and now she wants to watch me take a bath. Crazy, no? I hurry to the bathroom. Under the slow shower I hear her talking faintly to someone. My body goes tense.
When I come out of the bathroom there’s no one there. Were the voices just an illusion? I feel dizzy. Do beaches and mountains have the same character? Is it fata morgana?
I see her standing in front of the bed. The cat mask on, clutching the whip and wearing the bikini. Hey, what’s going on here? Are you Cat Woman or something? “I want us to start”, she says. I hear the meow of a cat. Her eyes are glowing again. I begin to weigh up the situation. Run or stay? It’s impossible to bolt in the dead of night. My accommodation is in the heart of town about forty-five minutes away. The hire car company doesn’t reopen until nine tomorrow morning.
I think it over. She’s quite alluring, though her thighs are too big for her small body. I think it over some more—there’s no harm in trying. I’m extremely curious. You only live once. Who says humans and cats are not one and the same thing? To me this kind of thinking just damages the relationship between creatures. Animal lovers must be wise people. Before I give the go ahead she jumps in front of me, impatient. She pushes me onto the bed. I lie back like a patient under anesthetic. She binds my hands and feet to the four bedposts with black tape, (luckily not with the handcuffs which I’d heard jingling earlier.) My body is in the form of an X; it’s more degrading than Jesus on the cross.
That night I sleep on the rattan sofa. My body is exhausted. It’d be hard for me to lie calmly beside her. She’s stretched out on the bed, still wearing the cat mask. I reach over for a packet of cigarettes on top of the laptop on the table, then plan to go looking for a lighter or matches. Maybe there are some in the drawer. Before I pull out the drawer I see my lighter lying on the floor. It must have fallen out of her pants’ pocket. I stiffen. She’d stolen my lighter!
We’re walking along the beach. The wind is strong. The beach is deserted on a weekday. Nets are being cast into the sea from the fishing boats in the distance. Yesterday, the lighthouse keeper suggested we come back just before New Year for the sea festival. I’ve never been to a festival on a beach before. Maybe I’ll come next year. All she says is “oh”. I pick up some shells and go to the water’s edge to wash them. She asks how many tons of shells I’m going to take back on the plane with me later. Tons? I’m offended. I answer sarcastically: a whole island’s worth if I can. Her response is a drawn out “oooh”. We say nothing for several minutes. Suddenly she grabs my hand. “I’m getting on in years and want to live a quiet life,” says the historian. She’s already fifty-two, I’m twenty-nine. A quiet life, how so? Is there such a thing as a quiet life? She laughs sweetly. I like it.
She’s about to set off to investigate the lighthouse from another vantage point. Thanks for last night, she says. My cheeks go hot but I feel happy. She gives me her email address and home telephone number and hopes we’ll meet again some day. I doubt we will. She’s a famous historian. I won’t give her name. This isn’t just a bit of fun. Maybe she wants a permanent relationship. She hopes I’ll stay on a bit longer. “But I have to go back to work,” I say hesitantly. She seems stung. “What do you do?” I’m curator of a gallery. “Okay then, we’ll meet when everything is sorted out,” she says. Does she know Naida? Just now she said we’ll meet again when “everything” is sorted out.
My biggest thing is Naida, an on-going business. Before I came here Naida had phoned to ask me if she could come back. Chen wasn’t a problem. Our relationship as lovers was long over, but she still had a considerable interest in me. One day Chen had put an eyelash in my palm. “Keep this as a souvenir,” she said. Not long after, I’d panicked because I’d lost Chen’s eyelash (maybe not as panicky as I felt about losing Chen). She laughed and hugged me and said that our relationship was as light as an eyelash, it could come to an end at any moment and could be just as meaningless. An eyelash that had fallen out was no longer an eyelash but something useless, just like a failed relationship. I thought Chen’s theory was right. I was separated from her when I met Naida. Chen was a bit sad but was soon okay about it.
She, the historian, moves over to the row of coconut palms. She sits down to rest under the palm where we met yesterday, its fronds curved more sharply than the others. I fiddle with my camera and photograph the lighthouse from all angles. Upright, soaring, forbidding. Once when I turn back to look at her she appears depressed. I take another picture of her. For a souvenir, okay? She even asks me to take a third picture. Click…. Click…. Click. We laugh in unison. I’ve never felt so happy. And strange.
Tomorrow I’m going back to Jakarta. My flight leaves at midday. She’s going a day later, certainly taking with her the mask, whip and bikini. Will she always bring out the props for her performance wherever she goes? Will all those places become her arena? I wonder why she takes those things with her everywhere, despite obviously being unrelated to her research. I’m jealous. Suddenly she apologizes for hiding my lighter. Why did you do it? If you hadn’t been in such a hurry you’d have found it. I didn’t want to pretend to find it on the beach. But why? So we could become closer because I’d done you a service. Ah, she’s crazy!
¤
Now I’m musing in front of the window, a square of glass in a dark brown frame. A tree bending. A trembling of branches. Flower petals. All tossed by the wind. A dragonfly collides with the glass then flies off wildly. I’m trapped here.
She hasn’t come home.
I step over to the corner of the room. I’m used to staying by myself in this corner, observing whatever’s going on, or reading, or watching TV with the mute button on, all day long. In the corner, all by itself, is a wheelchair made from some kind of wood I’m not familiar with, possibly some fragile type because one of the arms is cracked, with rusty nails sticking out of the gaps. The chair is rusty, and has almost had its day. I think of Chen’s theory. Maybe I’m about to approach the same point. On the wooden shelf are photos of my lighthouse. I flop down into the wheelchair, and take a deep breath.
The door squeaks. She’s come back. She has a sheaf of documents in her hand. A broad grin on her face.
I immediately take in the scent of her body, a faint mixture of musk and fresh ginger. This scent follows me everywhere, like a memory. A memory and an aroma are the same as a trauma, always stored for a long time, faint but rising up to fill my mind at some unexpected event like the effect of a low voltage electric shock. Suddenly I feel a gnawing pain in my heart when the box with the memory of you opens. You’re like a parked car which can take off again when the boss has finished his business. Your boss this time: a memory. I won’t be able to forget it. I’ve tried but I can’t.
She was the second May woman in my life, after a decade. Naida was the first. I met them in the same month.
“We’ll go to the doctor tomorrow,” she says.
“To the doctor?”
“Yes, last night you were screaming, really loudly.”
“I didn’t hear anything.”
“Of course you didn’t. You were having a nightmare.”
Oh …
The doctor said every May there’d be a pattern that would repeat itself. I was ill. Two hours after we’d separated on the beach a year ago, my car sped off down the toll road out of Jakarta airport. A group of young men were blocking the road. They forced me out of the car. They dragged me off … And … I was sick to my stomach, violently sick.
Translated by Toni Pollard