Death Trance (21 page)

They landed in Manila early in the afternoon, right after a rainstorm. The humidity was even more oppressive than it was in Memphis and Randolph was soaked in sweat by the time he claimed their baggage for the flight to Djakarta. Wanda was feeling jet-lagged and groggy, mainly because she had been dozing for the last two hours of the flight. Dr Ambara, however, now that he was nearing his native Indonesia, was almost ebullient and kept telling wry jokes. Randolph did not understand any of them but was polite enough to grunt and smile.

They asked the porter to take them across to the Air Merpati desk. Randolph, glancing around, saw Ecker and his three associates still waiting for their baggage by the carousel. Ecker was wiping the back of his neck with a handkerchief but he kept his eyes fixed on Randolph, who had no doubt by this time that the man was Reece and that he had been sent by the Cottonseed Association either to keep a close watch on him or to make sure that he never returned from Indonesia alive.

Dr Ambara said to the Indonesian girl behind the Air Merpati desk, 'Hold these bags for now. We have business here in Manila. We may not get back to the airport in time to make today's flight. But make sure nobody knows that we haven't checked in. If anybody asks about Mr Clare and his party, say they will certainly be leaving for Djakarta this afternoon. Do you understand that? It is a business matter, very confidential.’

'Yes, sir,’ the girl assured him. 'We thank you for choosing Air Merpati.’

Randolph went to the Pan Am courtesy lounge and while Wanda and Dr Ambara sat at the bar and drank cocktails, he called Neil Sleaman in Memphis.

'Neil? This is Randolph Clare. I'm calling from Manila. No, the flight for Djakarta doesn't leave for two hours yet. Listen, Neil, can you hear me? Good, because it seems like we have a difficulty here. There are four guys travelling on the same flight with us, all of them dressed in combat gear, very hard-looking characters indeed. Their names are Ecker, Heacox, Stroup and… I forget the fourth one. But the point is that their tickets were booked by Brooks and they almost exactly fit the descriptions Jimmy the Rib gave me. They've been keeping a close watch on us, too close. Well, of course I'm concerned. If there was only half a grain of truth in what Jimmy the Rib had to say, they could be the men who killed Marmie and the children, which would mean that Orbus Greene and Waverley Graceworthy are prepared to do just about anything to put me out of business, including homicide.’

Neil said, 'Perhaps I should talk to Chief Moyne. He could do some investigating. You know, check to see if any known criminals have left the city in the past twenty-four hours.’

'I think you ought to leave Chief Moyne out of this for the moment. All I want you to do is make sure that security at the plants is double-tight, and keep pushing Orbus Greene for an answer on Sun-Taste. He makes optimistic noises but I have a strong feeling he's going to say no. Maybe he's stringing us along until his hired maniacs can dispose of me altogether. Maybe I'm misjudging him badly and he doesn't mean to do me any harm at all. But keep an open mind. And, please, do whatever you can to get Raleigh back into production as soon as possible.’

Neil said calmly, 'Okay. Everything's under control. We should be back up to seventy-five-per-cent production by the end of the week.’

'Well, try for more,’ Randolph urged.

‘I’ll do my best, sir. Have a good flight.’

‘I’ll call you from Djakarta, although we may be leaving here tomorrow instead of today. I'd very much like to get those four hired gorillas off our backs.’

Neil said disparagingly, 'I shouldn't think they're anything but wartime veterans, sir, making a pilgrimage. It's the tenth anniversary of the fall of Saigon, remember.’

Randolph hung up the phone and went out to join Wanda and Dr Ambara at the bar. 'What's the plan?’ he asked Dr Ambara.

'Well,’ the doctor said, 'I personally believe it would be wiser to wait here in Manila for one night. There is another Air Merpati flight tomorrow, straight to Djakarta. If these men really are pursuing us, as you say, they will be obliged to return to Djakarta airport tomorrow and wait for us and by doing so, they will show their hand.’

They took a taxi out into the clamorous streets. The sky was dark red, like freshly spilled blood, and the high-rise buildings of Manila stood black and skeletal on either side. There was a strong smell of tropical mustiness, exhaust fumes, charcoal-grilled pork and sewage. Taxis hooted, bicycle bells jangled and lights streamed along the city streets. The taxi driver leaned back on his worn-out vinyl seat and asked, 'Hotel Pasay?’

That's right,’ said Dr Ambara firmly.

'Hotel Pasay is not for American,’ the taxi driver remarked.

'Just go there,’ Dr Ambara insisted.

'Maybe you make a mistake. Maybe you want to go to Manila Hilton. Also Hotel Bakati is first class.’

'Either you take us to the Hotel Pasay or I call a policeman,’ Dr Ambara told him.

'All right, buddy,’ the taxi driver told him in an odd Filipino-American accent. 'Your funeral.’

The centre of Manila, as they drove through, was noisy and crowded and jammed with traffic. Although, after Dresden, Manila had been the second-most-devastated city of the Second World War, it had not been rebuilt on Utopian lines. Instead, it had become an architectural portrait of the desperate social divisions between its rich inhabitants and its poor. Behind the guarded walls of Forbes Park and Makati stood some of the most opulent mansions in the East. Around the walls, within sight of the mansions' balconies, clustered derelict tenements, squatters' shacks and some of the most squalid slums Randolph had ever seen. Even in its worst days, Beale Street had been nothing like this. And over the whole city, reflecting the scarlet neon and the glaring street lights and the dangling lanterns, hung the haze of air pollution - the exhaust fumes of thousands of taxis, buses, Datsuns and worn-out Chevrolets - mingling with the foggy pall that rose from the South China Sea.

They drove past rows of modern stores advertising Sony televisions, hot dogs, 'authentic' souvenirs. Then they were jouncing into a run-down suburb with stalls lining the streets, and peeling buildings, and lanterns hanging on every corner. Eventually they reached a narrow-fronted building painted in vivid pink and with a hand-painted sign reading 'Hotel Pasay, All Welcome, Icey Drinks.’

They climbed out of the taxi and Dr Ambara paid the driver. Randolph looked up at the hotel dubiously. Wanda discreetly made a face. The night was hot and smelly and they were tired. Three small children were teasing a mangy dog on the hotel steps. A blind man with eyes as white as ping-pong balls was sitting on a nearby wall whistling monotonously. Two sexy little Filipino girls in red satin mini-skirts and ruffled white blouses were bouncing up and down on the saddle of a parked motorcycle.

'Nice neighbourhood,’ Wanda remarked. 'Did I hear that it was on the way up?’

Dr Ambara took her arm. 'You will be safe here, that is the important thing. This is not a rich neighbourhood but the people here are friends. Come up and meet one of my cousins.’

'You really think we're safe here?’ Randolph asked.

'For now,’ replied Dr Ambara.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Manila

Dr Ambara's 'cousin' turned out to be a handsome, motherly Javanese woman who had fled from Djakarta when General Suharto came to power. Her husband had been arrested and shot for his pro-Soekarno politics. Apparently Dr Ambara's father had helped her escape to Manila and had lent her enough money to buy the Hotel Pasay, where she catered to whores, schoolteachers and a motley assembly of Indonesian refugees.

Dr Ambara called her Flora, which of course was not her real name, but most of those Javanese who had escaped from Djakarta in 1966 had forgotten their real names and left their old identities behind. Flora wore a bright scarlet sari and a yellow silk head scarf, and her neck was decorated with twenty or thirty necklaces of shells and beads and Balinese silver. She led them into her own parlour at the back of the hotel; there was a low table, cushions were spread over the floor and a portable television constantly played. A red scarf draped over the light bulb gave the room an unhallowed dimness, and when he first entered, Randolph failed to see the two small children sitting in the far corner watching television, and the girl in the cheap satin teddy was painting her toenails with long-drawn-out concentration.

'You took very well,’ Flora told Dr Ambara. 'How is life in the United States?’

'Sometimes I miss Djakarta,’ Dr Ambara replied. He knew that he spoke for both of them.

'Well,’ said Flora, 'if you have come all this way to see me, I must feed you. Ana, bring the whisky.’

'I think I'd prefer a beer, if it's all the same to you,’ put in Randolph.

'You have Anker Bier?’ asked Dr Ambara.

Flora nodded. Dr Ambara said, 'Three Anker Biers then.’ He touched Randolph's arm and explained, 'Brewed in Djakarta.’

The girl in the teddy screwed the cap back on her nail-polish bottle and clomped through to the kitchen on her heels so she would not smudge her toenail polish. She came back with three bottles of beer and three glasses and uncapped the bottles with disinterested dexterity, as quick as an oyster shucker. She stared at Randolph unblinkingly as she poured out his beer. She was flat-faced, remorselessly pretty, with pearly white teeth and a diamond stud in the left side of her nose. Her nipples peaked up under the satin in tiny cones. She could have been any age from fourteen to twenty-four. She was probably closer to fourteen.

Flora settled herself on a cushion and they sat around her. 'It is many years now since I have seen this man,’ she said, 'but he is always welcome here. His family saved my life.’

'Those were bad times in Indonesia,’ Dr Ambara commented. 'Over one million people died when Suharto took power. Flora's poor husband was one of those who died for his political opinions. He was a considerable scholar, especially in Chinese matters.’

A bald man in round glasses and a KLM T-shirt entered apologetically, bent forward and whispered into Flora's ear. Flora nodded, and nodded again, and then said, ’
Ya, say a bisa tunggu. Tidak mengapa.’

'One of my guests from Djakarta,’ she explained when he had gone. 'He has lived with me now for twenty years, ever since I came here. He teaches mathematics at the local school and he asks every month if he could be late with his rent money. Of course I always say yes. To live here without harassment is a debt I owe to the people of my country, not them to me.’

They sat and talked and drank beer for nearly an hour. Then Ana came in with a huge bamboo tray crowded with porcelain bowls of fish soup,
adobong sugpo -
tiger prawns fried in butter with garlic and black pepper - and beef
tapa.
There were more chilled bottles of Anker Bier, and pots of jasmine tea.

Randolph had not realized how hungry he was. For the first time since he had heard that Marmie had died, he ate with an unrestrained appetite. Wanda had difficulty with her chopsticks but eventually Ana, smiling, brought her a porcelain spoon.

'I don't think I'm ever going to get the hang of those things,’ Wanda complained. 'It's like trying to write a letter with your pen between your toes.’

Later Randolph lit his pipe and sat back against the parlour wall as Wanda went upstairs to take a shower and Dr Ambara chatted with Flora. He closed his eyes for a while but he did not sleep. He could hear the television chattering in Filipino, and the stairs creaking as guests climbed up and down, and the distant honking of traffic.

When he opened his eyes, Flora said to him with considerable interest, 'Ambara has been telling me why you have come here. It is not the usual reason for Americans to visit Indonesia. Usually they come for the beaches, and for the folk art.’

Randolph sat up straight. 'I suppose it is unusual for an American to believe that the spirits of his loved ones can still be contacted after their death.’

'Ambara has told you of the dangers?’

'I think he has made them pretty clear.’

Flora raised one finger to indicate that he should take serious note of what she was saying. 'You are not dealing with ghosts, my dear sir, or with mischievous demons. I hope Ambara has told you that. You are trespassing into the territory of the Goddess Rangda herself, the great terrible one, and into the country of the leyaks.’

Randolph said, 'Do you know anyone who has actually been into a death trance?’

'Fatmawati, the wife of Soekarno, she attempted it once. I do not know if she was successful. But it has always been against the law in Indonesia. They say it is prohibited because it would encourage foreign tourists to abuse the sacred ceremonies of the Trisakti, but the real truth is that they are afraid of the leyaks.’

'In what way? Surely the leyaks can harm you only if you put yourself into a trance.’

Flora shook her head and her shell beads clattered. 'This is not true. Did not Ambara tell you that the gateway to the region of Yama is two-way, both entrance and exit, and that there is always a risk that when you leave the world of the dead and return from your trance, you will be followed by leyaks, who can use your gateway to gain admission to the real world. That is why the government prohibits the death trance. It is not the life of the adept that concerns them. If an adept is foolish enough to take the chance of being devoured by the Goddess Rangda, that is his own concern. But the authorities are terrified that leyaks might escape into the community, for every time that has happened, there has been a wholesale slaughter of innocent people. The leyaks are quite merciless. They think of nothing but serving their goddess and of finding rest for their own tormented spirits.’

Randolph said, 'I have the distinct feeling that you are trying to discourage me from carrying this through.’

'It is not for me to encourage you or to discourage you. It is not my place. Ambara's father saved my life and permitted me to survive. If Ambara believes that it is right for you to enter the world of Yama in search of your family, I cannot argue with him. I have a debt. But let me tell you this. I lost my husband and he was dearly beloved. There are two thousand things I wanted to say to him and that had to remain unsaid after he was dead. But I would not attempt to enter into the death trance to say those things. It is against the teachings of the Trisakti. It is blasphemy. And - apart from that - it is far too dangerous.’

Dr Ambara smiled, trying to be lighthearted. 'Flora was always the pessimist. Yes, Flora?’

But Randolph regarded her seriously and at length; he could tell by her expression that she was sincere. Her dark eyes glittered in the subdued scarlet light from the scarf-covered bulb and she exuded a perfume of musk and jasmine and civet oil.

Tell me,’ Randolph said. 'If a living person were to go into a death trance and if he were to be caught by the leyaks, what would happen?’

'No question, my dear sir. No question at all. He would be ripped to pieces in the way that a fox is ripped to pieces by hounds. Do you hunt in Tennessee? Is that a place where people hunt?’

'Yes, they do,’ Randolph said a little impatiently. 'But what happens to their souls once the leyaks have them? Do their souls still go to heaven?’

Flora shook her head. 'A person who is killed by leyaks becomes a leyak himself and is forever doomed to roam the world beyond the veil, seeking spirits for the Goddess Rangda.’

'What about spirits that are dead already? Say, the spirits of my family? What would happen to them if the leyaks caught them?’

They would cease to be, my dear sir. They would experience nothingness for time eternal. How can I put it? They would be like people in a coma. But this would be a coma from which they could never awaken.’

'So they would never be reincarnated?’

'Indeed,’ Flora nodded. 'It is the life essence of reincarnation upon which Rangda feeds. Without that life essence, the spirit is powerless. It remains in a grey dream, a dream without pictures, a dream without feelings, forever and ever. To be reborn into a happier life than ever before… that is the reward every spirit seeks. But for those whom Rangda has devoured, there is no reward. Only oblivion.’

Wanda had come down from her room and was standing in the doorway wearing a silk Filipino bathrobe, her wet hair wound in a towel. She had been listening to Flora with close attention and when Flora finished speaking, she asked quietly, 'Is it really so dangerous to go into one of these death trances?’

Flora looked up. 'If I could persuade anybody not to attempt it, my dear lady, I would. But Ida Bagus Ambara and Mr Clare have journeyed many miles to fulfill their quest. Both of them knew the dangers before they set out. Who am I to try to convince them otherwise?’

'Randolph,’ Wanda said, 'I didn't realize.’

Randolph felt almost embarrassed. 'I should have told you. But I'm prepared to take the risk.’

Wanda was nonplussed. 'You're prepared to take the risk? For what? Just to see your family again? You can never bring them back to life. Can't you let them alone? I mean, what
good
is it going to do even if you do see them?’

'I don't know,’ Randolph slowly said, 'but I have to try.’

'Suppose you get killed? Then what?’ Wanda demanded.

Randolph lowered his head. Wanda could scarcely hear him over the chattering of the television. 'I should have died along with Marmie. I should have been there. I won't be taking any risks that Marmie didn't take. And if they kill me… well, perhaps that's all I deserve.’

Randolph looked up then, challenging Wanda to argue with him. He had not meant to sound morbid or self-indulgent. But the fact remained that he had taken care of Marmie for nearly twenty years, and he had taken care of his children from the moment of their conception, and he still felt responsible for all of them. If their spirits were alive, if their spirits were reachable, he was certainly not yet prepared to consign them to tearful memory and home movies. If he had seen them struggling in a stormy sea, beyond saving, he still would have leaped off the cliffs to try to rescue them, or else to die with them if nothing else. His love for Marmie and the children had been as intense as that, as intense as life itself.

As far as Randolph was concerned, it was worth risking everything simply to tell Marmie that he loved her and always would and to wish her happiness in whatever new existences might lie ahead of her.

Wanda came over and sat down beside him. 'These demons… what are they, leyaks? Supposing these leyaks escape?’

Flora shook a Marlboro out of a nearly empty pack and said offhandedly, 'Supposing an airliner falls on this house? Supposing a plague sweeps through Manila and kills us all in our sleep? Supposing the world comes to an end tomorrow?’

She lit her cigarette and looked at Wanda slitty-eyed through the curling smoke.

Wanda said, 'Airliners and plagues, they're accidents. But going into a death trance, that isn't an accident. That's something you do on purpose.’

'Well, my dear lady,’ said Flora, 'I am afraid that shows how little you understand it. For all that I disapprove of it, 1 can recognize that it is an irresistible need. Death overtakes the ones we love all too quickly. Have you ever been bereaved? If you have, you will know what I mean. To speak to the loved ones we have lost, if only for a minute! The dreadful attraction of it!’

Wanda unwound the towel from her head and raked her straggly wet hair with her fingers. 'I understand how dangerous it is. You said yourself that it is dangerous.’

'Of course. But crossing the street is just as dangerous. And what do we achieve by crossing the street?’

'We get to the other side,’ Wanda countered.

'Well, you are right,’ conceded Flora and beckoned to Ana to bring more beer.

Their conversation for the rest of the evening was scrappy and disjointed. Everybody was aware that Wanda and Randolph were going to have a serious argument, and everybody made sure that they spoke about anything but death trances and leyaks and visiting the recently deceased. They talked about politics, investments and the cost of living in Manila. They talked about the latest movies and Filipino food. Flora gave Randolph her recipe
forsinigang na sugpo,
prawns in vegetable soup.

But Wanda remained angry and restive and Randolph was acutely aware of her mood. She had imagined when Randolph had invited her to join him that they would be going on nothing more than a slightly spiritualistic vacation, doing a little sightseeing and a little swimming, indulging in a great deal of thinking and forgetting, spending an hour or two with Oriental mystics, then going back to Memphis and back to work, refreshed and restored. There had been no suggestion that what Randolph intended to do was dangerous, or that he might be meddling with evil and carnivorous spirits. It sounded like nonsense. In fact, it sounded totally ridiculous. But all the same, if even half of it were true…