She tried writing to you using just your names, but never received a response, which I suppose means you never received the letters. All I had was your name. My plan was to try to find you, though I hadn’t figured out how.”
My mother had pressed their names on me and tried to describe the relationship of their house to the center of town. But I didn’t know whether I would have followed through on the search. Even while talking to my parents about the trip, I had already been making mental excuses as to why I hadn’t been able to track down Ani’s family. My memories of them were dim, and after all these years I had no idea how they would greet me.
One of the young men seated on the far side of the courtyard rose at my entry. “Sister,” he said. Thus began my introductions to the entire extended family. The group seemed to expand and shrink before my eyes, and consisted of at least fifteen people—children and grandchildren, a great-uncle. They greeted me, went in and out of the house, the children ran amok, all was lively. Ani’s husband, Wayan Tyo’s father, was nowhere to be seen, but his brothers and their wives and children had all congregated to meet me and to dine.
One young man hung back until Ani called him over. “This is Esa, Wayan Tyo’s close friend.”
I stretched out my hand, but he didn’t take it, ducking his head slightly instead and taking an almost imperceptible step back.
“He is wary of foreigners. Don’t worry, he will warm to you,” said Ani, laughing.
“Why are you wary?” I asked him.
He seemed to consider the question. Finally he said, “Memory. History. The past.”
Before I could think of how to respond, Ani bundled me over to the cluster of wives who had shyly moved in my direction. One asked, “Where is your husband?”
“I don’t have a husband.”
She and her sister-in-law exchanged glances.
“You have met my family,” said Wayan Tyo as he came out of the largest of the buildings. He laughed as he saw the two young girls clinging to me. “And my daughters.”
The older girl still grasped my hand. The younger had laid her head on my shoulder; a tiny hand caressed my neck. The electrical surge I had felt when Wayan Tyo touched me the previous day now jolted me through his children’s hands. I tried to let go, but the older girl was permanently attached and the younger fitted me like a scarf. He came down the few steps, shooed the one away, and tried to take the other, but gave up.
“Oh, these are your children,” I said. It hadn’t occurred to me that he had children. Of course he had children. “I don’t think I met your wife.”
He hesitated, then said, “She is not here. Do you remember this place?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe what I remember is the bungalow we rented from you rather than this house. But this courtyard—I remember the courtyard and this tree. It all seems smaller, maybe because I’m bigger.”
“Not much.”
I scowled at him. “You don’t have a lot of room to talk.”
He grinned, and again tried unsuccessfully to disengage his daughter.
Ani reached past him, took her granddaughter, and set her on the ground. Then she led me across the courtyard and away from the others. “And here. What do you remember? About Bali, not just about our home or your bungalow. If we had known that you were coming, you could have stayed in the bungalow, but now a couple from Chile is there. We’ll take you over after we eat so that you can see it.”
“I told Wayan Tyo, I remember this courtyard. In the early morning, I think. It’s not my most vivid memory. That took place at the bungalow where we stayed.”
She nodded encouragement, and I saw that she was leading me away from the others back to her world, her kitchen, as if she wanted a private conversation with me. No one followed us or interrupted. The kids continued chasing each other around the tree. Wayan Tyo joined his friend, brothers, and uncle. The young women tended to a crying baby.
Just to be talking, I said, “I remember peddlers coming around in the evening to sell textiles and paintings, sculptures. And I remember one evening in particular. We came back from dinner or a walk to find a young man squatting at the bottom of the steps, smoking. He had the longest, straightest pinky fingernail that I’d ever seen, longer than the cigarette. Not curved as they usually are. He held that little finger arched in such a way that I thought he was smoking two cigarettes.”
Ani handed me a bowl of beans to snap.
“He preceded us up to the porch, opened his bag, and began to spread out paintings on the deck. All this without a word. My parents took chairs and my brother and I stood around looking down on the sheets of paper at our feet, those paintings with their masses of tiny people, the foliage arranged like wallpaper. I’d never seen anything like them. It must have been early in our time here, because we certainly saw many more young men with paintings. Didn’t we?”
She was silent, peering into a pot on the stove that sent up a scent I couldn’t identify. The rice cooker clicked to warm and I lifted the lid, letting out a cloud of steam and the comfort of the smell of rice.
“The peddler spread out sheet after sheet of paper, and we kids squatted down to look. The detail created patterns. People cooking, bathing, swimming, washing their clothes, all within a jungle that formed the ground, the backdrop of the everyday scenes. Trees consisted of identical leaves, flattened and pressed one against the other. Now I know that these paintings were in the style developed in the 1920s and ’30s, the style of painting I’m here to research. Then I knew that they were paintings like I dreamed.” Ani stirred whatever was in the pot.
“After looking for some time, my parents began speaking with the peddler, but he didn’t have much English. He just nodded and smiled. Finally my mother said, ‘Jenna, which one do you like the best?’ My brother had jumped off the porch and was running around with a bunch of kids.” Finished with the beans, I fanned the greens on the table into a pattern.
“My mother’s question broke my reverie, so I began walking around the paintings, looking carefully at each one. This part might not be my memory. My parents still tell this story about me, so they may have filled in what I’ve lost. I looked and looked. It began growing dark and harder to see, and finally I pointed at one painting.
“The young man looked at me more closely and turned to someone who was standing on the ground below the deck. By then a group of people had gathered. He said something in Balinese. A woman translated for him.” I snapped the stem off a bean I’d missed and pictured the arrangement of patterns on the bamboo deck. Most of the paintings were dark, but there was one that had a light background.
“Yes,” she said.
“The woman was you? Ah. Well, you remember then, you translated for him and said that it was the one painting by his teacher. The best painting of all.” I laughed. “It’s the story that my family uses to illustrate why I became an art historian.”
“Do you think it is the reason?”
“In part. My love of art, and the books, the words, the ideas that describe the art. The research.”
She looked at me expectantly.
“They
