He pointed his spoon at her. ‘Don’t make a habit of it.’ She rolled her eyes and he added, ‘And it’s wonders.’
‘Wonders?’
‘Wonders that will never cease, not miracles.’
‘Okay, I will settle for wonders.’
He would have liked to turn it around then, to talk of her. He would have liked to say, and what about you? What are you looking for? Your lost son? But he knew that would make the light go from her eyes — and it wasn’t the right time. She had to be at work soon and he had to go back to the hut.
But along with the fantasy house that they would build together in the rice fields, he pictured, then, a fantasy letter arriving from Belgium. He pictured Rita holding it with trembling hands, looking at him, as if for permission to open it, and him sitting her at the small table on their veranda and placing a supportive hand on her shoulder before leaving her to open it in private — she would know that he was just indoors, whenever she was ready. And after some time, she would come inside, her eyes brimful of tears, and hold the letter out to him and say, ‘My son, he wants to come and visit.’ And then there would be some months of wrangling with the father, during which he, Harper, would lose his cool once in a while and threaten to go over to Belgium and kick that idiot her ex-husband down the stairs, and Rita would cry at night or go silent — but eventually, it would all lead to this: one day, when the house was complete and the guest room furnished, they would be standing together at Denpasar airport, waiting for the boy to arrive. And he, Harper, would see him first amongst the many youths emerging from Arrivals, because Rita was looking for her child but he was looking for Rita. The son would be a strapping youth, well built, with Rita’s soft features but dark hair. He would come over and he and Rita would embrace awkwardly, neither of them too emotional, not yet, and then he would turn and face Harper and shake his hand firmly and their eyes would meet in a moment of masculine recognition that, strange as this meeting might be for all of them, the one who would need protecting here would be Rita.
She hadn’t told him her son’s name yet: Viktor, perhaps, or Maxim? He would get the name eventually: she would tell him when she was ready to trust him with it. What does a man do when he is too old to look for father figures? Perhaps he finds a son.
Rita jumped up from the table. ‘I have to go.’ Her distracted, dreamy air was back, and he knew that, when they lived together, it would annoy him, that when her mind turned to her job, her responsibilities to her students, he would not be the focus of her attention any more. She would always switch off, just like that, say ‘I have to go,’ unexpectedly — he realised that he would have to quell his desire to become demanding at that stage. He would have to accept that she was still open to the world in a way that he was not. I’d better busy myself with building projects, he thought, otherwise I’ll start to annoy her.
She bent her head and gave him a brief kiss on the lips. ‘Next time I see you,’ she said, ‘two days’ time, I’ll have thought of a name to call you, then. Maybe I’ll make something up.’ She was gone.
He drove the car back to the top of the lane and left it there and walked up to the hut. Kadek might have been and gone already that morning, but if he was still there, maybe he would ask about buying the car. He wondered whether Kadek had been briefed about his departure yet or whether he would have to tell him himself. He would leave a handsome tip, in hard dollars. He hoped that Kadek would be sorry to see him go.
The doors to the hut were closed but the small silver padlock had not been attached to the metal loop that locked them shut: it was sitting on the table on the veranda, next to his washing bowl. That was unusual — Kadek was normally very thorough about locking up. Still, maybe things were different now, maybe Kadek knew he would be minding an empty building for a while, until the next incumbent that the Institute needed to squirrel away for a bit. Perhaps Kadek thought Harper wasn’t returning at all after his meeting with the lawyer. He would be used to the arbitrary comings and goings of Institute staff by now.
Harper stood on the veranda, facing the door. Then he reached out, took hold of the iron circle that lifted the latch, twisted it slowly. The latch lifted with a squeak and a scrape. He pushed the door back.
Inside, the hut was clean and tidy. Kadek had remade the bed and smoothed it immaculately. The mosquito net was tied in a neat waterfall of cotton around each post, the white sheets tucked in tight. He had emptied the ashtray of the burnt shreds of Francisca’s letter. The chair in front of the desk was inserted in its proper position neatly, not at the lazy diagonal that Harper always left it at. The hut could not have been more organised, more empty.
He stepped over the threshold. There was no breakfast waiting for him on the desk — that meant that Kadek had not been that morning, that the hut had been left tidy and emptied and unlocked all night while he had been at the guesthouse. He walked into the hut, leaving the door behind him pushed wide open, to admit the light. He went over to the shutters and opened them, pushing them back against the outside wall, and then all was filled with daylight inside, albeit still silent. He stood for a moment in the centre of the room.
Packing his few things wouldn’t take long. Perhaps Kadek would come later.
He went down to the river for a walk.
He came back and made himself some powdered coffee.
He grew hungry, and found the remainder of a packet of biscuits that he had left in a cupboard, a dry remnant of one of his few trips to the mini-market in town.
He sat on the veranda for a bit, watching the view, then went back inside and, suddenly tired in the full heat of the day, lay down and took a nap on the immaculate bed. When he woke, he climbed off the bed, still a little sleepy, looked at the creased sheets and felt a sense of trespass — he never normally slept during the day. He tugged at the edges of the sheets and then neatened them with the flat of his hand, so that Kadek would not have to do it when he showed up later, and as he straightened, it came to him what was familiar about Johan. He stood for a moment in the middle of the room, then turned to the corner cupboard, where he kept the whisky and the cigarettes.
There was no trace of moon. He had to navigate by holding his hands out in front of him, feeling the tree trunks and then grasping them and hauling himself slowly round. Once he was through the trees, he stood at the edge of the rice field, in the pitch dark, the men with machetes only metres behind him, and watched as the red tail light of the motorcycle disappeared down the rise. That was all he saw, in the blackness, that one, small, round red light, his chance of escape, dropping down the track, disappearing as if into the earth — and then there was nothing but night, and he was alone in the rice field and the men were hunting him and they would have heard the sound of the motor for certain and be heading his way. Wayan had done more than leave him alone in the dark: he had drawn the men towards him.
He stepped carefully away from the trees, towards the rise, lifting his feet slowly so as not to make splashing sounds in the mud and water, although his breath sounded so loud in his own chest, he could scarcely believe it was not giving him away. The men were nearby, he knew it, perhaps standing still and listening for any sign of him, but every now and then, there was a shout or a scream from the burning house on the other side of the field. The men’s companions were still killing Komang’s family. The noises would distract the men, perhaps, and if he stayed motionless, invisible, they might return to the main task in hand.
He should have let Wayan use a light, even if it had risked him being discovered: to leave the man alone in the dark in a water field — how stupid of him, he only had himself to blame.