Suddenly Lost Summer

Il y a longtemps, quand les enfants regardaient encore les avions qui gravent leurs traces célestes en haut, le garçon était très jeune, très naïf. C’était son dernier été d’innocence (avant la nuit triste imminente quand l’homme étrange allait venir des ténèbres, apportant des nouvelles catastrophiques, et le fils allait voir sa mère rougir et se friper comme une feuille en automne), un été des orages et d’une chaleur tropicale. Mais en cet après-midi enchanté, avec la béatitude qui vient de l’ignorance, le gamin déchaussé et ses camarades faisaient des farces dans une rue abandonnée suburbaine. L’atmosphère, pleine d’une clarté subaquatique, était soudain devenue un peu plus fraîche, et, à l’horizon, ils pouvaient voir, au-dessus d’un amas grandissant de nuages jaunes, la nappe grise d’une pluie lointaine. Tout d’un coup, ils se sont arrêtés court. À l’extrémité de la rue, la pluie tombait et elle s’avançait rapidement vers les enfants émerveillés. La pluie est arrivée, le charme a été rompu, et tous ont crié, tous ont ri, tous ont dansé de joie.

Journey around my room

From where I lie on my mattress on the floor, I can see the main room of my studio apartment in its entirety, either directly or via its dim reflection in the pearly glass globe that hangs from the center of a medallion--an upside down pie, full of lumpy curds and roses--on the ceiling. (I've just noticed a big black flea cantering over the furrows of my corduroy jeans; I bring my fist down heavily upon my thigh.) In the center of the globe I see a dark squarish shape, the rug, wearing on its lower right-hand corner a smaller, lighter rectangle, my bed, across which stretches a ghostly figure, me. Three smaller rectangles (two white, one red) that are set haphazardly against the rug's dark background just above my head are my dictionaries (English in two volumes, French) which double as bedside tables when I dine au lit. Five oblong trapezoidal digits extend from the rug's central palm. Two of them, dark and featureless, hang from its bottom edge: the door to my closet and the adjacent entryway from the minuscule L-shaped hall. The three remaining digits, radiating from the top edge of the central square, are brightly lit and animated, being the reflections of the three facets of my bay window (I have one of the smoothly curved variety, with glass panes and sashes of a matching curvature). At their base is a jumble of various shapes and colors pertaining to the objects on the surface of my desk. What appears to be a smaller, accessory window off to the right is the work of my mirror, which, resting on the chest of drawers, catches through the left-most window a portion of Fulton Street that would otherwise be invisible to me in my present position. Thus, the tiny image of a car that traverses the triptych from right to left is seen a moment later receding from left to right in the mirror's mirrored rectangle. The two side walls, pale beige and unadorned, do not figure prominently in my spherical pendant, but, examined directly, they form, together with their door-punctured brother, a playground for an endless series of transient fields and flashes of light and shade projected by passing cars. Occasionally an expanse of pale rippled light whose source may be the sun's glare on the rear window of a propitiously parked car will bear the imprint of intervening leaves belonging either to the somewhat dirty, bedraggled little tree just outside the window or to my own exuberant Schefflera that trumpets its leaflets upward in fan-shaped clusters from a basket on the desk. Before we move on to the rest of the apartment, note the radiator standing in its corner by the window, its four stubby legs piercing the carpet, its head cocked (mouth permanently embezzled in the short, twisted branch of a long narrow stem that emerges from the floor and disappears into the ceiling), its tail with that little hole from which water drips into a foil baking pan and from which gaseous sighs emerge at the end of the day. It's quite tame now, but for a while after I moved in it seemed fiercely inconsolable, and was especially upset when feeding--morning and evening meals were continually interrupted by mind-cleaving explosions. Now it purrs and percolates contentedly, emitting on occasion a low shudder that is less heard than felt: a pleasurable vibration in the pelvic bones.

The bathroom, small and windowless, harbored for a time in its upper corners a dynasty of daddy longlegs, whose last scion accidentally drowned last week while I was taking a shower.

From my chair in the kitchen I look across the table to the window. A vertical indentation in the building's box-like structure has provided space for an outdoor stairway, a garbage chute, and kitchen windows. The neighboring building is not very large, nor is it built right up to the property line, so quite a bit of light falls down into this well, and, although my apartment is on the first floor of a three story building, I can see, if I lean my head slightly to the left, a band of greenery from the neighbor's backyard with a bit of blue at the top. But there is another, more roundabout approach to sky-gazing possible here. Directly across from my window, but mostly hidden by my half-length curtain, is the kitchen window of a first-floor neighbor. More accessible to my sight is the second-floor kitchen window directly above it. Reflected in this window are a section of the rotund garbage chute and the third-floor window on the opposite side of the light well, i.e., on my side. Dimly seen behind the glass of this reflected window is a moving shape. I stare at it and it becomes still, seems to stare back. Suddenly the amorphous form condenses into a cat. But on the glass in front of this reflective cat is even another reflection: the top edge of the opposite side of the light well, another, more exalted section of the garbage chute, and, nestled into their cozy V, at last, the sky.

My Indonesian adventure: Chapter 2, the King of Bantimurung

On my way home from another visit to Soroako, I have some extra time and decide to go touring for a day around Makassar, an old port city in southwestern Sulawesi. I hire a driver who takes me first to a fort that has been turned into a museum, and then to the harbor, where I wander through a couple of the small wooden freighters that carry cargo between islands. One boat is loaded with lumber harvested from a Sulawesi forest, the other is bringing pink plastic stacking chairs from Java. Next, we drive north and east out of the city and, after an hour and a half, arrive at the village of Bantimurung, known for its waterfalls and butterflies. When I get out of the car, I am immediately approached by three small boys selling butterflies, 50,000 rupiah ($5) a box (a typical adult wage in Indonesia is around 30,000 rupiah a day). These boys are the size of five-year-olds, but they must be around seven or eight. Each box contains about a dozen butterflies, flattened, glued to cards, and wrapped in plastic. They look very dead. I say 'maybe later', and walk to the entrance gate of the park with the boys trailing behind. I pay the admission fee (5,000 rupiah for foreigners) and start walking up the little valley. Somehow, the boys are still with me. Soon they are joined by a friend, an older boy of maybe 14, and they chat together in Indonesian. I ask some questions and discover that the older one, Rizal, is fluent in English. He tells me about a cave I can explore a kilometer upstream, and we set off. The valley rapidly becomes a narrow canyon, with vertical sides of fragile limestone covered with vegetation so thick the sky is not visible. We go past a small waterfall—the water is flowing down a rock face against which are leaning a few Indonesian girls wearing their street clothes, keeping cool. A little further on, we come upon an old man tending a flashlight stand. I rent a flashlight, and we soon come to the cave entrance. Leading my band of four, I enter the first room, at the far end of which is a tiny passageway through which I maneuver, with not too much difficulty (I'm wearing flip flops), into a second, loftier room. The floor is damp but mostly firm, with a few wetter and squishier spots. Rizal begins to describe various noteworthy features. Near the top of a sloping wall there is a small stalagmite tightly and heavily wrapped in black plastic. Rizal says that it's for making wishes. You're supposed to wrap a piece of plastic around the knob and make your wish. When the wish comes true, you then come back and remove your piece of plastic (though how you identify it, and what you do with all the other pieces of plastic that have been wrapped over it in the meantime, I don't learn...but there is no shortage of wishing material—small black plastic bags are used by shopkeepers everywhere I've gone in Indonesia, and it's hard to go very far, even in a park devoted to waterfalls and butterflies, without finding a discarded one). At the innermost extremity of the room there is a small alcove just big enough for one smallish person to sit in. Rizal tells me that in that spot the King of Bantimurung sat for forty days and forty nights. I say, and what happened then?

—Then?

—What was the result of his sitting for forty days and forty nights?

—His mind became clear.

—What was his religion? How long ago did this happen?

—It was long ago, before there were any of the religions we have now. I don't know how many years. My grandfather told me these stories.

The last thing he shows me is a small pool of water in another recess in the wall. He says, "The story is that this is holy water. It's said that if you wash your face in it you will always look young." On the way out, my flashlight dies, and we are briefly in darkness. Rizal magically produces two small flashlights from somewhere on his person, and with their dim light we find our way slowly back to the entrance. Outside, I ask Rizal where the best place to swim is. He tells me there is a lake another couple of hundred meters upstream. We pass one pool which looks beautiful, but which R. says is extremely dangerous because of a whirlpool that sucks people under—several a year, according to him. We climb over some jagged boulders and come to a small lake. There are trees leaning over the water, and something rustling in their branches. Rizal says they are monkeys, and then I see a few of them as they forage for fruit. The water looks OK, but the lake bottom is mucky (no wonder, with all that monkey shit dropping from the trees). As we walk back down the trail, the boys reopen their boxes and restart their sales pitches. When we get to the entrance gate, I tell them I won't buy their butterflies, but I'll pay each of them for guiding me that day. I give Rizal 50,000 rupiah, 30,000 to Susri, the next-oldest boy (with whom Rizal had frequently consulted before answering my questions), and 25,000 to the two youngest. Susri remonstrates briefly with Rizal, and I ask R. what the problem is. Rizal says, smiling, "He thinks he should get as much as I did."