Jalan Jalan (2 page)

‘No. Wait,' I say.

Pak Andy steals a quick sideways glance at me and looks forward again. The car doesn't stop. The boy is jogging beside us, still trying to get his face back against the glass, and manages a glance at the note in my fingers. He's running and alternately tapping at the window and pointing to my hand. Pak turns the car right and the boy loses the race. I look over my shoulder and see him in his shorts and button-less open shirt raise his hands to the black night sky and shake his head.

‘Very bad people. Always asking for money. They should get a job. I have a job. You have a job. They should get a job.' Pak is shaking his head. ‘Very bad.'

I return the note to my wallet. I just hope my bed isn't much further. I don't want to sit next to this man for any longer than I have to.

‘We will be at the school very soon,' he says.

I turn my reddening and tired face towards him.

‘I will give you your timetable for classes before I take you to your house.'

There is a little smile touching his mouth. It isn't warm.

I close my eyes. Try to make my mind wander to irrelevant places. Ignore the fact that I've taken a dislike to my new boss, that I've made another glorious fuck-up in my life. My stomach grumbles. Lack of real food? Or the two additions to my innards?

The pair of them, muted and gagged. Shoved down in my gut and not allowed to interrupt my ‘new' life until I'm ready for them, which I might never be. Old Me isn't as clear-cut as New Me. I can push moments of life aside. He can't. He dwells and sobs on the things which I try to ignore. He's pathetic. He wants to share his moments in time. Relive them like they're still now. Well he can just shut up about his moments with Laura and the times that the two of them want to regurgitate.

I've had enough. That's why I've got rid of him, of them. She is dead and he needs to shut up about the past. Shut up saying that it is still there. That those moments still exist. That if they happen in the first place then they must still be there, like an object to revisit. He needs to stop telling me that if those moments still exist, then, maybe, so does Laura..…

Just stop.

There is no point. Not to his questions and not to her constant amateur philosophising. Her quotes from head-fucks like Einstein. Stupid fucking gems like, ‘… the distinction between past, present, and future is only an illusion, however persistent.' Blah blah blah.

She messes her hair up like Einstein when she does it.

Bullshit.

He drives me fucking mad with his hope. She drives me mad by showing up in my head, talking her rubbish. So stay in the dark, both of you. For good. You, Old Me, are as dead as her. A ghost. Stay with the ghost of her.

I rub my eyes and look at the outside. We are now moving slowly through traffic. The city has enveloped us. Cars and motorbikes spew black smoke and edge along on either side of the car. Then we pull off of the road and onto the forecourt of an ugly building.

‘We are here.'

I look to Pak Andy, and something in me wants to hurt him.

HUNGER

T
he
school is green and white under flickering floodlights. It is three storeys tall. Above it a green and white sign spells out ‘English World'. In front of the building stand about ten people, smoking, talking, but mostly just smoking. They are older teenagers, some dark-skinned Indonesians, some Chinese, all holding books under their arms. Others walk out of the glass doors: attractive dark-haired girls; Chinese boys dressed like James Dean popping cigarettes into their mouths as they flick back their amateur quiffs; younger kids, about fifteen in white-shirted and grey-trousered school uniforms. They cross the two-car-sized forecourt we have just pulled into, passing by my window, and disappear into the mayhem of the road we've just left.

‘The classes have finished,' says Pak. He turns off the engine, opens his door and is gone.

‘Righto.' I stare after him, open my door and climb down from my seat.

I enter an airless outside; the smell of diesel and two-stroke engines sticks to the atmosphere like a greasy film. I look behind me at the road. Motorcycle taxis putt-putt and leak black fumes, car taxis beep at them to move, bicycle taxis ring their bells for lazy pedestrian attention and nothing moves at more than ten miles an hour on the constipated road.

‘Hey. You. Hello,' one of a group of four sitting in front of the school shouts.

I smile back, but am too tired and too unsure how to reply. Confidence and energy are dripping from me like oil from a sump. It won't be long before I seize up.

‘You are the new teacher?' He is strutting towards me, a Chinese boy in leather jacket, white open-neck shirt and a bouncing quiff.

‘Yes. I am.'

‘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 of? Me idiot. That's who. But that's what I'm about. I don't care anymore. Or at least I try not to. I'm supposed to just do it. New Me
just does it.

I lean my head on the desk, turned a little so I can feel the desk's smooth cold on my cheek. Sleep. Need sleep. Sleep tonight. Relax tomorrow. I'll be fine.

The air conditioning hums a lullaby on the wall above me, wafting cool air across my aching neck. My eyes close, open, close. Soothing on my neck. Laura gently runs her fingers over my nape and up into my hair; she rests her hand on the back of my head, fingers softly massaging my scalp while she gently whispers,

—
Don't worry, baby. Don't worry
.

Her breath sways the minuscule hairs in my ear back and forth like meadow grass, meadow grass that I'm lying in, the sweet smell of it in my nose. Her hands on my cheeks, she kisses my eyelids, my nose, my lips…

BANG.

I open my eyes, my hand clasps my mouth trying to hold her there but she is gone. I look around, not sure of where I am. Epool stands in the doorway, a bag of something in his hand, the smell of chilli swirling around him.

‘Food for you, mister.' He makes a rotating hand movement in front of his mouth.

‘Thanks.' I blink away any fragments of Laura and the meadow and hit my chest to silence the dead. Epool eyes me with the caution of a small, nervous child.