IN THE MOUTH OF THE VOLCANO
‘And I asked myself about the present:
how wide it was, how deep it was,
how much was mine to keep.’
—Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five
ESCAPE
Achilly late-spring day on the seafront in a preseason coastal town; a few couples meandering hand in hand, hatted grannies on Zimmer frames, granddads in electric carts tied to black Labradors, kids wobbling on Rollerblades, wearing fingerless gloves. People trying out the sun’s weak warmth for the first time of the year, looking through winter-softened eyes at a cold calm sea. The blue-white pier tinged with the brown-orange of rust and rotting wood, is dipping its toes in the spring-tide water. Small waves whisper as they curl in on the pebbled beach.
Drinking tea with a tiled counter between them. The young man and the young woman, leaning into each other. Hands almost touching. Two people who have just met, talking about everything like best friends. All early uncertainty and awkwardness gone, evaporated in the steam of half a dozen cuppas. She steps away every now and then to let an elderly lady buy her own tea, or a young mum with pram and toddler buy the first ice cream of the year; a mini-milk, it’s too early in the season to turn the Whippy machine on. And then she moves back in, leaning across the counter further, until finally she takes that first kiss, rips it right off his face like a plaster and he’s left there, licking his lips, feeling for damage, wanting more.
The sun is now midway between midday and sunset.
‘I need to go,’ she says.
‘And I need to close up,’ I say.
We look at each other. She is back-lit in silver with ebony hair tumbling from under a green hat onto a green scarf. Green eyes blink once from under thick black lashes. A smile appears briefly at the corners of her lips.
‘Well?’ she says.
‘Well,’ I answer through a mouth of dry, crumbly clay.
‘The tea?’
‘The tea?’
‘The tea.’
‘Oh the tea.’
‘Yes. The tea.’
‘On the house. Free.’
‘Thank you.’
She raises one eyebrow. I smile not knowing what I’m supposed to do in response, not sure what she even means with this gesture. Why is she raising her so very fine and utterly black eyebrow at me?
‘So?’ she asks.
‘So,’ I reply. I move straws and spinning windmills and a postcard rack carrying pictures of cliffs and lighthouses and gardens full of flowers off the counter.
An afternoon has passed too quickly and now my mouth has reached a point of immobility. My mind races to think of what I should say to her now, before she goes, so that this is more than an exceptional afternoon, so that it is to be repeated. I must think of something and force it down and along the muscle of my tongue.
‘Eight o’clock,’ she says with an eyebrow raised once more.
‘Yes.’
‘In front of the pier,’ she tells me.
‘Yes.’
‘Good.’
‘Good.’ I smile. I reach across. I put my hand into the softness and warmth behind her neck and guide her forward. I kiss her. She kisses me. We kiss.
It is…
It is…
Beautiful.
It is Painful.
It is Hurtful.
Mean.
I open my eyes and a tear falls, landing on the back of my hand. I wipe it on my trousers.
Oh, you hurtful bastard, taking me by surprise again. Why do you make me relive it? It’s done. Laura’s dead. Forget it.
I blink and look from the window and through rain that batters the car. I see night, and that is all. Darkness and water stick to the glass like oil, thick and viscous.
You will not get in my head anymore. I want you gone. Enough of you and your pain and pathetic sentimentalities. You and her stay down in my gut where it’s dark. Be quiet and be forgotten. Lie there, cuddle up and wrap yourselves together in your self-pity. Sleep next to the beating of my heart and leave me be.
My hand scrunches the front of my shirt, wishing it could reach under, through the flesh, and rip them out forever.
‘Is first time in Indonesia?’
I look to the man driving this four-by-four. His name is Pak Andy and he has just collected me from Medan’s airport on Sumatra. He’s a Chinese Indonesian with a swirl of thinning hair and a large mole under his lip. My new boss.
‘Yes.’ My blunt answer does the trick and doesn’t lead to any more questions. As he was late in meeting me at the airport and his voice hints at boredom, I don’t think he cares anyway.
The silence returns. I try to focus on and imagine where I’m being taken; an apartment, a house, a hostel, a hovel? I haven’t got a bloody clue where. I haven’t got a clue about this country. And I’ve just signed up for a year. The first year of the new millennium and I’m here, lost mentally and geographically. How messed up is that?
After five minutes of more silence
