The Flame Tree (3 page)

Sometime later that night he dreamed of a crow spiraling out of the sky, landing on the railing of his bedroom’s small porch, such a realistic dream that he was certain he was awake. The crow hopped into the room, spread its wings…Isaac woke, really woke, in a sweat. He didn’t fall asleep again for a long time.

T
HE NEW SCHOOL YEAR
started on Monday. During Opening Assembly, Isaac, along with fifty-five students and eight teachers, pledged his allegiance to the United States flag, a new one the size of a bed sheet that hung stiff as starch from its bronze eagle stanchion. The one teacher excused from pledging was the new Indonesian language and culture instructor, a Javanese man who spoke perfect BBC English, and from whose amber skin wafted English Leather cologne. The principal, Miss Augusta, asked the teacher to introduce himself. He said that his name was Mr. Suherman, that his father was a banker, that he’d grown up in London, and that he was a Muslim but was honored to be teaching in this Christian school.

After Assembly, Miss Augusta called Isaac into her tidy office and told him that since he’d already skipped two grades, they didn’t want him to skip again, even though he could do high-school material. “You’ll get ahead of your age group,” she said, gazing at him with her left glass eye that saw all. She was the only black-skinned American Isaac knew, and he’d known her for as long as he could remember. Each year more of her crinkly hair turned gray. “So this year, we’ll be assigning you special projects.”

One of these projects was Esperanto, in one-on-one sessions with Mr. Suherman, as the language was one of the teacher’s hobbies. Isaac, born and raised in Wonobo, Java, was already fluently trilingual in English, Indonesian, and Javanese. He didn’t see why he should learn a new language, especially an artificial one, no matter what Mr. Suherman said about it being created in part to help bring the world together. But he did help Isaac with several complicated logarithmic problems that the math teacher Mr. Patter had given to Isaac (“The same type of problems occur in banking,” Mr. Suherman said). Mr. Suherman was unfailingly courteous and polite, but when raucous Slobert threw spit wads during the first Indonesian culture lesson, one of two regular classes that Isaac attended with the seventh and eighth graders (the other being Bible study), Mr. Suherman’s skin and voice seemed to shift as he softly scolded Slobert, revealing steel underneath the softness, the quiet but compelling authoritative aura that only the highest-born Javanese displayed. Slobert reddened but shut up.

The boarders ate lunch at the dorm, and the few day students ate bag lunches at picnic tables under the flame tree, but Isaac ate at home, meals prepared by the Williamses’ housekeeper, Ruth, a Muslim widow who’d converted to Christianity. Each day that week as he trudged home for lunch, he detoured into the grove to have a look at the secret gate. He’d placed a small black thread in the crack; it remained in place, telling Isaac that whoever had made the gate was not using it.

On Saturday, after getting permission from his mother and
leaving properly through the hospital gates, Isaac went with Ismail to search for treasure in the cane fields. They came up empty-handed, although the excitement of spotting a large python squeezing through a culvert more than made up for that. When they said their good-byes in the late afternoon, Ismail reminded Isaac of the dangdut show at the village square the next day. No way Isaac would be able to get permission for that, but he said, “I’ll be there,” thinking excitedly that at last he had a real reason to use the secret gate.

That evening Isaac’s mother came into his room to tuck him in. “Remember to take out what you need from here tomorrow morning,” she said to Isaac as she kissed his forehead. “Reverend Biggs will be here early.”

Reverend Biggs normally would have taken the guest bungalow, but it was currently occupied by a missionary from Kalimantan, hugely pregnant with twins refusing to be born. The reverend was going to be sleeping in Isaac’s bedroom because it had a big bed. Isaac was moving into his sister’s old room with its small four-poster, and he wasn’t happy about it.

Reverend Biggs was pink and plump. His thick silver hair rested on his head like a helmet. It didn’t move, not even when he got all wound up during his Sunday-morning sermon at the Maranatha Church of Wonobo. The thought of that head on his pillow unnerved Isaac.

The sonorous “amen” of the reverend’s final benediction was still rolling toward the gates of heaven as Isaac quickly slipped out to the foyer. He halted in surprise. Out of the sanctuary’s other
side strode Mr. Suherman. He waved a greeting at Isaac, who blurted, “I thought you were a Muslim.”

“I am, but that does not mean I cannot attend church,” Mr. Suherman said. He bent close, humor rising in his clear black eyes, and said, “Are you praying with the others for my salvation?”

Actually, Isaac wasn’t, even though he knew he should be. This was one of many things that had been bothering him at night as he tried to sleep. “All my prayers get used up for myself,” Isaac said, surprised he would admit such a thing.

“Including a prayer for an A in Esperanto?” Mr. Suherman said, laughing. “Remember to study for the lesson tomorrow.
Adiau, mia bona studanto
.”

After Sunday lunch Isaac used the secret gate to sneak out of the compound to meet Ismail for the show in town. He stopped by Pak Hem’s fruit stand for a slice of chilled melon. A soft-faced Javanese trying to cultivate a full beard and wearing a black turban and cream-colored robe stood behind the counter.

“Where’s Pak Heru?” Isaac asked.

“He’s moved to Surabaya. I own this shop now.” The man gave Isaac that ultrapolite Javanese smile that said something was seriously wrong. Isaac saw too late the picture of Tuan Guru Haji Abdullah Abubakar hanging on the wall. The man said, “I know who you are. Who you all are. After three days guests and fish begin to stink. You Americans should leave Java. Let Muslim doctors treat the Muslim sick.”

Isaac felt embarrassed for the man, that a Javanese would
descend to such discourtesy. He left the shop without a word. Something was indeed fishy. Wouldn’t Pak Heru have told Isaac he was moving?

Isaac scurried down the avenue. As usual, the legless beggar slumped against the wall of the bus stop’s security post, his eyes closed and his mouth moving sporadically as he mumbled in his sleep. His begging cup, out by the sidewalk, had toppled over. Isaac set it upright. He hesitated, thinking of the money in his pocket. But he didn’t know how much he would need at the square.

And besides
, he thought, with a flare of anger that surprised him,
let the Muslims take care of their own poor
.

He passed the cemetery and the Pertamina gasoline station and came to the town’s chaotic bus terminal, perpetually screened by the black smoke of diesel exhaust fumes.

A trio of heavily made-up women in tight satin gowns stepped down from a grimy bus into Isaac’s path. One of them waved her extraordinarily big fingers at him.

“What a cute bulé boy,” the second said in a deep male voice, speaking Javanese and clearly not expecting Isaac to understand.

Oh, boy
, Isaac thought.
Bencongs
.

The third
bencong
, the most petite and prettiest of the three, said, “I wonder if he’s going to have blond hair all over when he’s older.”

“His balls are probably as blue as his eyes,” the first bencong said. “And being an infidel, he’s probably got an uncircumcised snake between them.”

“At least my balls are not black and rotting like yours,” Isaac said in fluent gutter Javanese.

The three bencongs stared at him and then burst into helpless laughter, falling into one another’s arms. When their mirth subsided, the first one asked, “Where are you going?”

“To see the dangdut singers in the town square.”

“Why, we’re three of them!” the second bencong said. “Come along with us, we’ll make sure you get a good seat.” They waved Isaac into their midst and merrily made their way to the town plaza, several blocks away.

The grassy plaza was big enough for two soccer fields. Majestic mahogany trees lined three sides. On the treeless north side stood a large wooden stage shaded by a canvas awning. Twin stacks of loudspeakers backed a fleet of microphones. The drums looked like a gym set. Technicians checked the sound system. The one wearing a T-shirt printed with the stern visage of Tuan Guru Haji Abdullah Abubakar took the test mike and said in Indonesian, “The only good American is a dead American.” He withdrew for a second and then put his mouth to the mike again to add, “But don’t kill Eminem or Limp Bizkit.” His friends on the stage laughed. Isaac, who’d never heard such a sentiment expressed publicly before, slowed his steps. He glanced around the rapidly filling square, an unease pricking him like a mosquito bite. At least fifty policemen in riot gear were filing out of the police station adjacent to the eastern side of the plaza and were assembling underneath the mahogany trees.

Maybe being here wasn’t such a good idea.

“Don’t worry,” the petite bencong said. She—for she was too pretty for Isaac to think of as a man—knelt as far as her tight gown would allow and gave him a hug and a delicate kiss on the cheek. “That bastard is only a loudmouth; we’ll keep you safe.”

She took his hand and led him into the performers’ tent, pitched on the windward side of the stage and cooled by the light breeze. Cloth screens sectioned the space into cubicles. Performers perched on stools in front of portable cosmetic stands and mirrors, touching up their makeup. The bencongs found their cubicle and put Isaac on a folding aluminum chair right next to the steps leading up to the stage. One flame-cheeked, kohl-eyed girl in black tights and a red tube top with a pin in her navel caught Isaac’s gaze in her mirror and, after an initial flare of surprise at seeing a white boy, blew him a ruby-lipped kiss. His ears felt like they’d burst into flames.

From his seat, he had a good view of Wonobo’s Grand Mosque on the other side of the wide avenue. Even though Isaac was a good Christian boy, he was proud that his town had the province’s most beautiful mosque, so beautiful that
National Geographic
magazine had published a full-page photograph of it. The vast marble prayer hall could hold ten thousand worshippers. The central dome soared hundreds of feet into the air, thrusting a pure gold star and crescent insignia up to the clouds. A throng of several hundred men, most in Islamic robes or caftans, stood expectantly on the wide steps to the main entrance, ignoring the happenings on the square.

Ismail soon found him. “Can’t miss your big blond head,” he
said, giving that crooked grin. Over his tattered jeans he wore a bright new T-shirt printed with the picture of the Tuan Guru. Isaac frowned. Ismail laughed, plucking at the sleeve. “There’s a stand at the corner selling them. You want one?”

“No,” Isaac said.

Ismail drew closer and whispered, “I didn’t actually buy it, you know. It was sort of lying discarded on the ground.”

The fact that Ismail had shoplifted the T-shirt made Isaac feel better about the fact that he was wearing it. “That’s stealing,” he said with mock sternness. “You’ll get your hands chopped off.”

“Ah, that’s just for crazy Muslims like the Taliban. Look at this.” He tugged on a leather thong around his neck, which was strung through the hole in the Chinese coin they had found at the river. “Maybe we’ll find one for you next time.”

The band members took their places on the stage and warmed up with drumrolls and flute warbles and electric guitar twangs, now and again melding together for a few bars of the blood-itchy
dang dut dang dang dut
rhythm. The crowd on the plaza had thickened considerably. The teenage kids pressing toward the stage were held back by a phalanx of private security guards.

The MC, a portly man wearing a red bow tie and green suspenders, rattled through his opening speech. Isaac still couldn’t figure out the purpose of this festivity—it wasn’t a special holiday, and no political campaigning was going on. But so what?

The first performer, the girl in the black tights and red tube top, sang to a hot and spicy
dang dang dut
beat that set the air to quivering. Most of the crowd danced in place. This wasn’t the
ridiculous hopping and jerking that his sister Rachel loved to watch on MTV, but a slower-paced movement of shuffling feet, rotating buttocks and waist, undulating shoulders and arms, the hands occasionally high over head. The singer’s movements were so languid as to be sultry, putting the crowd on slow boil. A lad old enough to sport a tiny mustache ducked underneath the security guards and jumped up on stage. The guards let him be, for this was part of a public dangdut show. The singer fluttered her eyelashes at the lad, and the two danced together as she sang.

The pretty bencong bent down to Isaac’s ear. “You know what she’s singing about?”

“No, not exactly, what?”

“Losing her virginity. You know anything about that?”

Isaac gave her a grossed-out look. She laughed and clapped him across the shoulders. “You will, you will. Oh, our turn.”

The bencongs minced up on stage to roars of laughter. Their lyrics Isaac understood, about a man falling in love with a woman who was a man. The pretty bencong, mike in hand, stepped halfway down the stairs and extended her hand to Isaac, who went rigid in alarm. She wiggled her fingers. Ismail, laughing, pushed Isaac toward her. She clamped her hand around his wrist and dragged him onto the stage. The crowd momentarily hushed upon seeing a blond-haired, blue-eyed bulé boy on stage and then cheered in delighted surprise. Isaac’s stage fright eased. Something strange began to happen to him. The infectious beat pouring out of the speakers vibrated along his spine and loosened
his muscles. He started to dance, really dance. The bencong’s eyes widened, the band members grinned at him, and the crowd doubled its roaring, with cries of
“dangdut bulé, dangdut bulé.”
Several photographers rushed forward to take his picture. When the song ended and Isaac descended from the stage, he was flush with a new, grand feeling. Who cared if he was in no grade, with no classroom friends, when he could have an
audience?

“That was great,” Ismail said, slapping him across the back. “I didn’t know you could dance like that.”