It was then he saw a movement, a shadow to his left, no more than the shift of something lighter in the dark, pale clothing perhaps, against the black wall of the treeline. The breath froze in his throat. In daytime, shadows were dark: in this pitch black, they were light. If Wayan had seen this ghost-shape moving around in the dark, of course he would have cracked.
The ghost flickered, whimpered, clutched his arm, thin fingers digging into his flesh. He grabbed at a bony shoulder and at that point a cloud above them must have shifted a little; there was a small amount of moonlight. He pulled the ghost towards him. It was Komang’s wife. He looked down into her face, which was a rictus of fear. She must have been the fleeing shadow he had seen when he had watched the men murder Komang — she had been hoping to draw the men away from her home, her children. If so, she must know by now it was a strategy that had failed. He wondered how long she had been hiding in the trees, too terrified to return to her house, too terrified to run, perhaps hoping that one or two of the other household members had been able to flee in the chaos. And then she had realised that the tall figure she could just about see emerging from the trees was Harper, the stranger who had come to the house earlier that day, the man who her husband said was a friend.
He was holding her by the shoulder but she was also holding him, seizing his arm in a bony grip. They stood clutching at each other. For a moment or two they were both just clinging and breathing and he saw, mirrored in her petrified gaze, his own fear. He lifted a finger to his mouth, then, to indicate she should be silent, although his own breath was coming louder than hers.
He heard a scuffle in the undergrowth, turned, saw the glow of a flaming torch — and with no warning, the men were upon them. The ones holding the torch were further away than the ones who had come close in the dark, who had emerged from the trees behind Komang’s wife. They must have been the party hunting her, not the one hunting him: the one hunting him was the more distant group. He felt a moment of fury that she had not only frightened Wayan away but led them to him. If she had stayed hidden in the trees, he would not have been discovered. He could have dropped down into an irrigation ditch while they were upon her.
These thoughts were swift — at once, several of the men grabbed her and she screamed and babbled in fear and they shouted back and the men with the torches came running, their feet splashing in the water.
They were surrounded then — between fifteen and twenty men, he estimated. It was hard to tell in the dark, with the shifting shadows thrown by the torches: each figure lit by orange had a shadow figure in black: in the dark, the men were doubled.
He knew he had one chance. He drew himself up to his full height and said loudly and firmly in Indonesian, ‘I found her. She was hiding in the trees.’
The men on the edge of the group were talking excitedly but the two closest to Harper looked at him. One raised a paraffin lantern: Harper could see the oval of his face, questioning. ‘I found her,’ he repeated. ‘She was trying to flee that way. There was a man waiting for her on a motorbike but he left.’
Komang’s wife was still talking very fast, whimpering and crying with a rise and fall, a rise into a small scream, a fall into a plea, the desperate sound of someone pleading for her life, her children — and one of the men, very small, very young-looking in the orange light, stepped forward and raised both his arms together, elbows bent, then struck her on the side of her head with an object Harper couldn’t see. She gave a single, sharp cry and fell to the ground. The young man looked at Harper then, to see how he would react. Harper kept his face still.
The boy looked around and the other young men clapped him on the shoulder. Then the group turned back in on itself, began talking excitedly.
The older man with the oval face was still standing next to Harper. Harper folded his arms, said, ‘What are they saying?’
The older man lifted his chin — his paraffin lantern swung to and fro, illuminating first one side of his face and one group of men, then the other side of his face and another. Komang’s wife was just visible on the ground, a small heap, silent now, but alive, her breath heaving inside her, the curve of her back rising and falling. ‘First we will put her face then her honour to the fire,’ the man said, nodding towards the flaming torch held by a man on the other side of the group.
Harper stepped forward. Komang’s wife was still bent in a heap. As he reached her, his feet sank in the mud and the irrigation water rose halfway up his calves. He grabbed the hair on the back of her head — it was loose and fell over his wrist — and she had only time for one final, inarticulate cry before he pushed her face down into the muddy water, put his other hand on the back of her head, and steeled every muscle in his arms to hold her there.
He was a young man. He was strong. His arms were like iron. And yet, the strength of a woman desperate to live — she got one arm up and began clawing at his forearms. Her legs kicked out behind her, splashing in the water. She even managed to raise her back a little. Who would have thought such a small woman had that strength? One of the men had lifted a paraffin lantern high to illuminate the scene. Die quickly, Harper thought, for God’s sake, die quickly, or they will stop me killing you. And yet, incredibly, she managed to shift her head a little and he had to use both hands to push her down again. And then one of the men dropped down to sit on her legs to stop them kicking out, and he knew that they would not stop him from killing her. Their own scheme was forgotten.
Strands of her hair clung across his wrist, the rest floating around her head; the ditch was illuminated black and orange; bubbles were rising through it. He began to count backwards from a hundred, softly, under his breath — he knew his lips were moving although there was no more than a whisper coming from them, one hundred, ninety-nine, ninety-eight. . Her whole body shook and the hand, small and bony, continued to scrape at his arm. . eighty-four, eighty-three, eighty-two. . she dug her fingers into his arm. . seventy-two, seventy-one, seventy. . His counting was slow — more than a second per number, he thought: a slow count back from a hundred would be around three minutes. It took longer than that to drown but she was small and had already been face down for a minute or two before he started counting. She would surely lose consciousness soon. Sixty-eight, sixty-seven, sixty-six. . He did not look up at the men who had gathered round him, watching. They had fallen silent. He concentrated all his effort on keeping the woman’s head beneath the water. Fifty-six, fifty-five, fifty-four. . he realised he was counting back in numerals but thinking in tens. Forty-two, forty-one, forty. . The counting became everything. His arms were like rock now. It was the numbers in his head, the soft movements of his lips — that was what he concentrated on. Thirty-three, thirty-two, thirty-one. . Time had no meaning any more. Only the numbers had meaning. Twenty-eight, twenty-seven, twenty-six. . He was so nearly there. He just wanted to be there. Fifteen, fourteen, thirteen. . The men around still said nothing, just stood, and the night insects were blaring and there was a crackle from one of the flaming torches but he could sense they were all motionless even though he didn’t look up. And finally. . Three, two, ONE!
Even after he had finished counting, he did not release her. He did not dare. If the job was not finished, she would be burnt to death, and he too, possibly. He stayed where he was, his breath heaving in his chest, waiting.