style="font-size:15px;"> ‘I am Johnny,’ he announces as if he is the MC at his own concert, all stress on his name. Pulling his collar up around his neck, he flicks a white filtered cigarette between his lips.
‘Nice to meet you.’ I wonder if I’ve accidentally flown Time Machine Airlines and travelled back to the ’50s. I half-expect him to start singing an Elvis song and the people on the forecourt to start jiving.
‘What’s your name, man?’ he asks, looking at me from under his quiff.
‘I’m…’ A piercing two-fingered whistle, louder than the noise of the traffic, kills my introduction. Pak Andy is standing in the door to the school waving his hand for me to go away. I look about, trying to work out where he wants me to go to. I point a finger at his car. He shakes his head and waves his hand some more.
I point to the street, lost by his directions.
‘No, man. He wants you to go in,’ says Johnny.
‘So why’s he shooing me away?’
‘I don’t know what “shooing” is, man, but what he does means come here.’ He waves his cigarette at a scowling Pak.
I point to my chest and then to the school to get confirmation from Pak. He nods and waves for me to go away like he’s trying to lose snot stuck to his hand. Even unspoken language is foreign here.
‘Thanks. Maybe see you later,’ I say to Johnny.
‘Yeah. See you, man. Watch out for Pak Andy. He’ll take your last rupiah.’
I step from the heat and stench of the street into the skin-prick-ling coolness of the school reception, all green and white with plastic plants gathering dust. Pak is standing with an elbow on the reception counter. Seated behind it is an overweight Chinese guy of about twenty-five. Even with the fridge-like air conditioning there is a wet patch spreading out from under each armpit. He studies me through long thin eyes that are hardly there.
Pak introduces him as Albert the receptionist. Albert hoists himself off his stool and lays his hand in mine like a piece of wet fish which lies there for a second before sliding off.
‘You are hungry?’ Pak asks me.
Am I? My stomach rolls and turns, but I’m not sure if it’s hunger or him trying to throw some more Laura my way.
What does she think of me standing here now in a completely foreign place trying to be not me? Probably raising an eyebrow and poking me in the side and saying something like, ‘Nice move, numbnuts.’
And I laugh or poke her back and try to lick that irritating, sexy, ebony caterpillar over her left eye.
‘Yes or no?’
Oh, well done, you crafty bastards. I swallow down on them and the broken fragments of pain they’ve left. Perhaps I do need to throw some sort of foreign food down me to stop the heartburn.
‘Yes. Food would be good. No meat, please. I’m vegetarian.’
He snorts and is then yelling out something that sounds like ‘Eepooo.’
From down the corridor that runs off next to the counter comes hurrying an Indonesian in matching brown shirt and trousers. He is as high as my chest, with a long dark-brown fringe that hangs over his eyes.
Eepooo stands in front of Pak with his head slightly bowed through either respect or fear. Pak doles out some foreign words which have the clipped tone of instruction, and a couple of notes from his back pocket. Eepooo, if that is his name, shoves the money in his shirt pocket, looks at me from under his fringe and flashes a set of impressively white large teeth in such a way that I can’t help but smile back. I think of Mowgli: Mowgli ripped out of The Jungle Book and put in the uniform of an errand boy, no doubt Baloo having been captured for his dancing skills and placed in a cage somewhere to amuse simple and mindless tourists.
I must be getting tired. My mind is going all over the place.
Still smiling, Mowgli goes out of the front door and boogies across the road, probably singing to himself, ‘Be doop doop do, I wanna be like you-oo.’
Knackered. I want a bed.
‘Food is coming. Come. I’ll show you the staffroom and give you your timetable. You will start at nine tomorrow morning.’ Pak walks off down the corridor.
Nine? Tomorrow morning? I look at the clock hanging behind the counter to make sure I haven’t crossed fewer time lines than I think I have. Fat boy behind the counter smiles in such a way that I don’t return it.
I follow Pak down the corridor and into a room on the left. A very tired New Me is about to take control of the situation and tell Pak there is no way he’s working tomorrow. As Old Me would say, there are moments different to this. Moments when he thinks very strongly about saying no to things he doesn’t want to do, but never actually does. Probably because he’s a gutless wimp of a piece of shit. So I am impressed and proud when New Me, being the opposite of his nemesis, opens his mouth and says, ‘No. Sorry. I’m not working tomorrow.’
Pak is standing next to a desk against the wall, one of about ten lining the room.
‘You will sit here.’
‘OK. But I’m not working tomorrow. Sorry, Pak, but I’m jetlagged and need to sleep.’
‘But I have you on the timetable for tomorrow. There are students.’
Old Me almost surfaces, but I swallow him down.
‘Sorry. Wednesday alright, but not tomorrow.’
‘I will have to ask another teacher to cover. He won’t like it, but…you are tired. I am always being told you Westerners are different, not used to work, and I need to understand. OK. You can start Wednesday. Class J1. Here is all the information you need.’ Red-faced, he picks up a folder on my desk, waves it at me and drops it again.
‘Thanks.’
‘And please, do not call me Pak. It is Pak Andy, like you say Mr Andy in English or Andy-san in Japan. Please show respect.’
‘Oh. OK, Pak Andy. Sorry.’ I guess I’ve pissed him off. Never mind.
‘Wait here. I have some work to do in my office. Epool will bring you food in a minute.’ He is gone from the staffroom. I look at the green folder and think about opening it. I can’t be arsed. I sit in my new chair and hope I can stay awake long enough for the food to arrive.
So Eepooo isn’t Eepooo but Epool. I prefer Mowgli.
Looking around, the room feels like an academic Mary Celeste. Papers and open textbooks lie arrayed on most desks, some pinned down by coffee mugs.
What has happened to the teachers? They must have made a rapid exit if the classes have only just finished. Perhaps there are no teachers. I am The Replacement. The Teacher.
I’m too tired to consider the god-almighty cock-up I might have made in coming here. What sort of idiot takes a job after a five-minute phone interview, in a country he knows nothing much about and on the other side of the world, in a school he’s never heard
