Sitting in Java Dancer, the best coffee house in Malang, after retrieving my passport from Imigrasi, I realise how few days I have left now and that I will never climb Gunung Semeru, visit the Karimunjawa islands or see the ruins of the ancient Majapahit capital at Trowulan.
Viv came back from Ache late last night and I expect Kit, Claire and Viv to turn up here any moment for cake and coffee. I mentioned that Maddy and Lisa let them selves get swept away – their chosen lifestyle – while swimming and could have vanished forever into the vast Indian Ocean, well, it seems there was another minor skirmish with Death while on the plane coming back to Java. According to Maddy she woke up when the engines stopped and she supposed they were coming in to land... until she realised they still had at least another hour to go. Then the plane plummeted, passengers and aircrew screamed bersama-sama to Allah, Christ and the Lord of Profanity. Death took a closer look at his catch and on seeing they were mostly minnows, and sniggish ones at that, he threw them back in disgust.
The engines coughed and started, the plane levelled out and carried on towards Jakarta and the cabin crew gibbered, unable to speak a single word of Indonesian or English.
Viv's account was somewhat more minimalist, 'I think the plane juddered, or something.'. Death having taken pity on he as he threw back the tiddlers pressed upon Viv his consoling gift of amnesia.
Yesterday I wrote about things I will miss in a general sort of way, today I am writing about more specific, more personal things; the silence just before dawn and the calls from the mosques that start the day at first light; the chattering and bickering of the little munias as they squabble for berries outside my window; the thousand overpowering smells and tastes in a busy market; the loneliness and the press of the crowd. Java attracts more than its share fugitives, frotteurs, foundlings, flaneurs, fools, fakes and frauds from the West and often the quiet hour before dawn was spent wondering into which category I fell; the first I hope, but probably one of the others. There is always the thought of redemption when one travels later in life into remoter areas and other cultures; and it is always an imaginary place one travels to, so that in effect there is no arrival and no departure. As Italo Calvino wrote of Venice, there is no need to even rise from your chair, Venice is always present in the mind, countless invisible cities in countless forms. So it is with this Java I have created, there is no clear line, no horizon or boundary fence that delineates the real from the imaginary. The crackle and sweet taste of smoke from a kretek, the coldest possible Bintang at the end of the days; sweat that pour in streams down your back until you think that, like the Squonk, you will soon dissolve into nothing more than a pool of salt water and bubbles.
There are people I will miss, but also the creatures that seem to be barely clinging on to existence in an island so packed with humanity there is room for little else; the spider in my garden in Jogja, Tokay the gecko, the Respectable Skinks, the innumerable ants, the munias – yang tersebut – the bulbuls, always on the look out for an opportunityy of some kind and even the small flies, the invisble noseeums that feed on feet. All these will be missed. The silent smoking volcanoes that appear and disappear through the mist like Basho's Fuji, First you see a mountain Then no mountain....
Gunung Merapi, Gunung Bromo, Gunung Arjuna, Gunung Semeru, Gunung Merabu and all the rest. The rectangular brown pools of water that become bright green fields of rice, the impossibly steep hillsides carved into terraces that grow cabbages, onions, beans and tobacco. These will be missed. The sudden smiles and laughter, the absurd good natured haggling over prices and the ability to fix or find another use for anything broken. These too.
It seems I am only just beginning to get used to this country; I have just taken the last step down off the aeroplane and have not yet even shown my passport and its time to turn and climb the steps again. But no matter, Java is , where it always has been, in my imagination and I travel on to more remote, more difficult areas in search of that damned elusive something, the Snark, the Boojum the Squonk – yang tersebut –or just that simple thing what Jim was looking for.