Zeb, however, was fully aware that Sarah was getting bored with him in bed. He noticed it in a certain glaze that came over her eyes, and since they always kept the lights on during sex, he would get to see every little thing in those eyes that he loved so much. He didn’t bring up the topic because he didn’t want her to get defensive, which might trigger their first fight. It was an unusually long relationship for him, too, but he wanted to make it even longer. So he continued performing his sexual duties the best he could, while thinking of a plan to make things better.
One night in December, he suddenly thought of something. It was an idea that seemed to him quite fine, and so he started grinning. Luckily, Sarah was already asleep by then, so she didn’t have to wonder at this sudden, unexplained cheer.
Twenty-four hours later—after they’d both been to work and back separately, as was their usual weekday routine, the only difference being that this time Zeb had made an extra stop along the way home at a dusty bookshop named Toko Junk—they found themselves in bed again.
They were in the middle of foreplay, and without looking up at her face, he could sense (at the most subliminal level) that her enthusiasm was less than his. He suddenly stopped what he was doing. She noticed the change in the usual rhythm and opened her eyes. He was no longer in bed, but standing beside it.
‘What’s the matter?’ she asked, hitching herself up.
‘Wait till you see this,’ he said, and walked to a large paper bag that he’d left on the dresser. He removed something from the bag and walked back, joining her in bed. She accepted the thing; it was a hardcover book, exquisitely bound in burgundy and obviously old, but written in a script that she didn’t understand.
‘It’s an ancient Javanese sex manual,’ he explained.
‘It doesn’t look Japanese.’
‘No, JaVAnese,’ he corrected her. ‘Luckily, it’s a language I can read.
It’s called the Serat Centhiniand it’s from the early 19th century. It’s sometimes referred to as the Southeast Asian Kama Sutrabecause it’s so sexually explicit. During the course of the story—and yes, unlike the Kama Sutra, there is actually a strong narrative—there are many lessons on how men and women can best pleasure each other, because sexual ecstasy is seen as something that can help people attain spiritual enlightenment.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘You can Google it; the book exists!’
‘No, I mean I don’t believe you can read it. Who on earth reads ancient Javanese?’
‘I learned it from my grandfather. Look, I’ll prove it to you,’ he said, and he lay back against a raised pillow, getting her to do the same against the other one. The pillows, nice and big, were from IKEA.
He put his right arm around her shoulder while his left hand flicked open the musty tome at a random early page. He started reading aloud. The words sounded incantatory, even frightening, as if he were putting a curse on her.
She half-expected the room to start filling up with kemenyanincense. He read out a whole page, the fingers of his left hand travelling down the book while those of his right hand, almost unconsciously, touched various parts of her.
When he was done, he had a slight frown.
‘It’s very strange,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure I get it.’
‘Why, what is it?’ she asked, getting curious in spite of herself.
‘It’s describing an esoteric sex ritual involving tempoyak.’
‘ Tempoyak?’
‘Yes, tempoyak.’
‘I didn’t know the ancient Javanese ate fermented durian.’
‘This isn’t exactly for eating.’ And then he described in some detail (he was translating a whole page, after all) how the tempoyakshould be used.
She was incredulous, then amused, then intrigued—but still rather mystified.
‘But why would that be pleasurable? It doesn’t seem logical,’ she said, after the ritual had been described so vividly she felt like a 3-D demonstration had taken place in front of her, like a triple-X version of Avatar.
‘Don’t know. Maybe it was true in the early 19th century but no longer so now.’ He wanted to put the book away, but she stopped him. His right hand continued to touch parts of her, and now she placed his left hand, which still held the book, over some other parts of her. As the exquisite burgundy binding of the hardcover travelled over her skin, she thought of the possibilities.
The next day, as per their usual weekday routine, they took their separate routes to work. She ended up lunching with three of her colleagues at a Malay restaurant. The place was packed, and the whirring fans didn’t do much for the humidity, but the food was good. While she had a little sambal petaiwith her rice and tenggirifish, she also asked to take away a Tupperware of tempoyak.
‘You actually like that stuff? It’s so sour,’ her colleague Mel said.
‘Yeah, I know,’ Sarah said, vaguely. She reached for her phone to call Zeb and was dismayed to see that the battery had run out. She could wait to use the charger in the office, of course, but she felt an urgency within her. She asked to borrow Mel’s phone.
She dialled Zeb’s number from memory, and he took his time answering.
Sarah knew she had to keep her part of the conversation discreet because her three colleagues were within hearing distance. She didn’t want to seem like some kind of pervert.
‘It’s me. Borrowed phone. I bought the tempoyak,’ she said, when he was finally on the other end. ‘Should we try the… recipe tonight?’
He laughed. ‘Serious?’
‘Yes’ she said, keeping her voice light. ‘I’m curious to see how it will taste.’
‘Okay, but there are a few other items we’ll need to get. The tools.’
‘Yes, I remember the items. Can we get modern-day equivalents? Some of those ancient ones won’t be available now.’
‘I will check with IKEA after work,’ he said, and she could almost see him wink.
After the call ended, her other colleague, Rini, said, ‘Waah, I didn’t know you two cooked.’
‘There’s a first time for everything. It’s a Japa—… Javanese recipe.’
‘Those things tend to be spicy, right?’ asked her third colleague, Ling.
‘We shall see,’ was all Sarah said.
As promised, he had a bag of IKEA products. They spent a bit of time preparing in the kitchen, and when everything seemed to be in place, he asked, ‘Are you ready?’ and she replied, ‘Sure!’
They did it in the kitchen itself because there were already paper towels and power sockets there. And it was, in a word, awesome. She tingled in places she didn’t even know existed; at a precise moment during the ritual, she actually thought her head would swivel around like in a movie possession, because she really felt like she was being taken outside herself, into a more primitive but more vital realm of the senses. Perhaps she was taken out of the Earth into the mythical sky kingdom of Kayangan.
When it was finally over, she wanted to start all over again. He was willing, but there was no tempoyakleft. When they both stopped panting, he said, ‘Tomorrow you can bring a bigger Tupperware.’
That was the start of the most amazing week of her life. She couldn’t concentrate at work. The simplest things, such as watching creamer dissolve in coffee, would make her blush with remembered pleasure. It was like everything else became black-and-white while the sex thing with the tempoyakevery night was not only in colour, but the swirling, explosive palette of a Bollywood musical sequence. (Why deny it: she’d always preferred Bollywood to classical music. The Malaysian Philharmonic could safely be ignored now.)