YANTI FINISHED arranging her flowers in the woven palm leaf. By carefully following her mother’s example, she presented a work of considerable beauty and care. It would now be her offering at the family temple. Her mother smiled.

     This is the best of women’s work, thought the mother, making things beautiful for the gods.

     As they worked, Yanti chattered contentedly, sometimes squatting on the concrete slab at the front of their house, sometimes breaking into a showy flourish of a local dance.

     Someday someone will see those pretty hands and that lively movement of those hips, and they will take her away from here. Present your beauty, girl, and you will have babies of your own. Work hard for your man, your village, the gods. You will give everything and you will be rewarded.

     Yanti’s older brother, Wayan, came into the courtyard; he had been bathing in the fields behind the beach. He put his damp towel on the line with the other drying clothes.

     ‘The Japanese girl is back,’ he said.

     ‘What was she doing, taking a bath in front of you?’ Showing her belly? Her legs? Shame is the one thing those visitors won’t display!

     ‘Ha! She was doing what they all do: lying on the beach.’ Wayan and his friends had walked back and forth along the sand, trying to figure out what would capture her attention.

     ‘Yanti, bring me the matches,’ said the children’s mother. She needed to talk to the gods, now.

 

And All is Well

 

Fine, smoky, little ringlets of sandalwood rose up from the family’s padmasana shrine, but the flutters of a munia dispersed them as it stopped by to peck at the rice grains offered there, it was as pleased as the gods themselves.

     Just beyond, on the soft black sands that stretched for miles, Yuki turned over onto her back to admire the cloth kites in the afternoon sky. Red, black, white, shaped like birds, like boats, manta rays, could that be a squid?

     Such beautiful people, who have so few cares in the world that they can spend half a day flying a kite! I feel like one of those kites when I come here … free and floating, far above this crazy world.

     From girls’ secondary school to design school and into the hell of marriage, Yuki had finally freed herself and found her dream on an island of gods and rice and cheap labour.

     She turned her gaze to the white surf and thought that she had better get changed for dinner with Audrey. Although the warm sand anchored her in a feeling of sumptuous bliss, she was here to buy Audrey’s garment factory, the most ambitious thing she’d done since her divorce the year before.

     Yuki rose slowly from the sand, the fine black powder encrusted on her shins. It clung to her toes. It was as soft and unruly as the flotsam in her morning coffee, an annoyance she was learning to tolerate. In Bali, things have a funny clinging way of asserting themselves. A few boys and men nearby stood up to watch her pass, and she tried to hide her anger. I do everything! I cover my arms and knees, but still they stare. Why? If I stare back, they’ve got no embarrassment to speak of, and only become encouraged.

     She reached the gate to Audrey’s villa and eased open the latch. Earlier that day, she had been surprised by a gecko. The encounter both frightened and delighted her, and she wondered if she would see it there again. The villa was to become hers with the purchase of the factory workshop, Audrey’s label, and the network of buyers, suppliers, and subcontractors. It thrilled her that even the gecko and the creaky gate would be included, a sort of bonus, and as she entered the lush garden she forgot all about the sand and the boys.

 

 Balance

Audrey was waiting when Yuki came out of the shower.

     ‘Sorry, Yuki; I startled you.’

     Audrey! You do nothing but startle me. Stuffing me into your car at the airport, entering your office to sit with your unsmiling face boxed by tall stacks of receipts and documents, your brusque way of tapping the spoon when you’ve stirred your coffee, your bossy cautionary tales, your pacing when I am sitting. For someone who has made herself a life in paradise, you are a nervous wreck.

     ‘It’s okay. Can I help you?’

     ‘We’ll be eating dinner here tonight. Putu won’t be able to drive us and the pembantu has a ceremony to go to. I know that you were looking forward to dining at Warisan, and, believe me, it would have been a welcome bit of luxury for me. But maybe it’s better that we have this private time to go over anything you might want to ask about. I’ll throw something together and we can talk in the kitchen.’

     Yuki smiled. She wanted to show Audrey her understanding and tolerance of Balinese culture: pretend there are no surprises on an island full of surprises. Japan too had its share of ceremonial obligations, though none that could pull your staff away at a moment’s notice.

     ‘Sounds like fun.’

     ‘Good. I’ll open a bottle.’ Audrey dashed away.

     Yuki sighed when she put away the delicate and expensive outfit she was saving for their dinner at Warisan. Because Audrey was wearing a torn sarong and dirty T-shirt, she didn’t want to overdress.

     So odd for someone in the fashion business, to dress so carelessly. Perhaps that is the real reason she wants to sell to me. She doesn’t really have her heart in this line of work. I do believe this was all meant to be mine.

     Bali wasn’t right for her, obviously. But I understand the beauty of this place; I have a deep appreciation of its history and culture. And to think, she stopped to ask me what songket was when I told her my ideas about using the royal weavings of Karangasem.

     So to mirror her hostess, Yuki dressed in a bright orange print sarong from one of Jalan Sulawesi’s cheap yardage stores, adding a silly T-shirt that spelled Hong Kong backwards. But to show allegiance to fashion, she wrapped around her waist the hot-pink silk scarf she’d found in Ubud.

     Audrey almost smiled when she gave Yuki’s outfit the once-over. She wiped her nose with her forearm and gestured to an empty glass and an open bottle of Australian Shiraz. She turned back to a sizzling wok and chose her words for this, their final meeting before the last of Yuki’s money was transferred.

     ‘Yuki,’ she yelled over her shoulder, ‘I know I’ve talked an awful lot about the business and the house and the village, but in practical matters, you can’t really be too careful. Is there anything you want to discuss?’

     ‘Ah! Yes,’ said Yuki. ‘Will PT Aryani sew buttons as well as beading?’

     Audrey turned to find Yuki’s deadpan expression. ‘Actually, I’m not sure about that … probably … I don’t see why not.’

     ‘Okay.’ Silence. Yuki’s perfectly cut, shockingly dyed hair seemed to not move while she nodded and sipped her wine.

     ‘No more questions?’ Audrey fingered her goblet absently.

     ‘Well, you can always email me.’ Audrey leaned back away from the table and drank deeply from her glass. It’s over.

Four Seasons

 

The kite season’s steady winds ended in the stagnant air of September, when the village was dry and the farmers watched and waited for grey clouds.

     Motorcyclists kicked up dust in the roads and one stopped to give Yuki a bag of blouse samples from a Javanese contractor. She sat on the floor and carefully tore their seams so her factory girls could make patterns.

     Within earshot of the machine clatter from the factory compound, little Yanti perfected her skills of making offerings, watched the girls going to and from work, and practised the dances she was learning at her weekend classes.

     In time the rains came and poured so hard that even the farmers thought it was more than enough. The village, lush and muddy, was hit with dengue fever and even the Japanese woman was rumoured to have it. Her pembantu told everyone that Yuki would take only juice and had not left her bed for two weeks. One by one, the sewing machines fell idle. The punctual factory girls were left to painting their nails and chattering among themselves.

     The heat of March and April became unbearable for the young men like Yanti’s brother, who took to resting long hours while the women kept busy as ever, cooking rice or creating dust storms with their brooms. Some of the young women who were no longer needed at the clothing factory helped their mothers and aunts at home in the kampong.

     When the winds returned in July, so did the kites.

     In August, Yanti was coming home from kindergarten when she saw the gates to the clothing factory propped wide open. The girls seemed to be taking a break; their chattering was animated. How Yanti wanted to get a job there someday, for those women had pretty handbags and their own motorcycles.

     Suddenly, the Japanese girl, who had been running the factory for a whole year now, came dashing out, calling to the workers. Yanti halted at the sight of Yuki’s fiery head of hair, her chubby knees, her mere slits for eyes.

     Is this what the goddess Kali looks like? Yanti was mesmerised.

     To regain her composure, she thought about the dance she was learning. She made her neck long and her face dignified, but it didn’t last. She was startled to see the advance of a group of men and boys. Her brother was there with them, shoulder-to-shoulder with his friend Gede. Both of them held bamboo sticks.

     ‘Go home,’ Wayan called to Yanti in his new grown-up voice.

     She broke into a run and didn’t look back.

 

Yappari

 

The village head man chose to sit on the floor, and Yuki knew enough about men to brush past her favourite rattan chair and join him on the bare floor. She glanced quickly around for the pembantu with the coffee.

     Her first year had been a hard one. Yuki had lost two accounts and her line of gauzy butterflywing blouses didn’t even pay for themselves.

     She looked at the men who stood around the doorway, at the rough hands of the farmers, the delicate hands of the merchants. Surely they can understand that sometimes it rains, sometimes it doesn’t.

     The village head man smiled and asked that even the laid-off workers get paid.

     I should have saved a little from my divorce, not given it all to Audrey.

     ‘These are very big problems that the whole world is having,’ she said at last. The pembantu appeared and slowly kneeled in front of the head man to hand out glasses of coffee. The way she made her daily offerings.

     Yuki flashed on a moment when she and Audrey glimpsed the pembantu laying out tiny offerings of rice at the front gate. Five squares of banana leaves became a sort of quilt square on the ground, to Yuki’s delight. Audrey called the daily ritual the glue of the social fabric.

     Eyes downcast, Yuki almost smiled at the memory. She could see that the men were raising their glasses and having little sips of coffee.

     ‘It is not just your problem, or even my problem, Bapak,’ she began. ‘All of our prayers are needed. Even the banks are praying now.’

     The head man smiled and took a crackling drag of his kretek. Some of the men behind him nodded. The flaring end of his cigarette was all the fire he’d make today. There was nothing left to say. He took up his coffee, drank enough to be polite, and shook hands with Yuki before leaving.

     Yuki put her head down and waited until the men could no longer be heard.

     Trying to make herself invisible, she ventured out to the beach. Some boys had a kite up, a black and white plastic bag fashioned in the shape of a diamond, surprisingly strong as it took the wind.

     She stood for a long time, just watching the plastic bag pull madly against its tether.

     Shikata ga nai, she sighed. A phrase that perfectly evoked as much meaning in Japanese as it lost in translation – nothing can be done about it. Yuki lay back on the black sand, soaking up its warmth.

     Upwind, not far away, the very last ember of sandalwood lit by a little girl named Yanti burned out as crisply as a kiss.