The Fifth Season (60 page)

Mary Jo lifted her head and looked up, immediately realizing her mistake when her eyes were struck by the sun's brilliance, painfully blinding her vision. The temperature was even hotter than the day before and Mary Jo knew that she had to keep her mind occupied. The wind had dropped, the timbers on that part of their vessel which floated above the water line, scorched. She peered at Hani and Lily wearily, her throat dry, resisting the temptation to ask for water then, knowing that only a sip remained.

Her mind wandered and for a moment her head was filled fleetingly with images of her father. Mary Jo knew she was losing it. She had to keep herself conscious - she had to make the others talk.

‘Lily,'
she called, her voice barely audible. There was no response. She tried again,
‘Lily, let's talk.'
This was also greeted with silence.
‘Lily?'
she whispered louder, concerned she might have slipped into unconsciousness, dehydrated by the unrelenting heat.

‘What is it?'
Lily answered hoarsely, her speech slightly slurred. She had been dozing, her body resting against the ship.
‘Is something wrong?'

Had their circumstances been different, Mary Jo might have broken into laughter. There they were, floating around the Indian Ocean in a water-logged, storm thrashed fishing trawler and Lily wanted to know if there was something wrong.

A wry smile threatened to crack her lips and Mary Jo's mind suddenly snapped back. She knew she had to keep talking or at least avoid sleeping during daylight hours, their only chance of sighting another vessel. She kept telling herself that as long as they were alive, there was still hope. Slowly, she scanned the horizon and her hopes fell - only nothing. During the night their boat had drifted further, the large ship they had spotted before, in their minds perhaps a figment of their willing imagination. She could see a few deserted trawlers floating around aimlessly in the distance. Mary Jo looked back at Lily, deciding it would be in both their interests to get her talking.

‘We've got to try and stay alert.'
There was silence for a moment, then Mary Jo watched as Lily came slowly to life, leaned forward and rubbed her dry face.

‘Let's finish what's left, now,'
she suggested, moving cautiously to where the jerry-can lay, propped alongside the hold.

‘We should wait, if you can,'
Mary Jo warned. Lily paused, thought about this, then sighed.

‘I know,'
she said, but there was no sign of desperation in her voice.

Mary Jo followed Lily's eyes to where Hani lay asleep. She did not look well.

‘What will you do if they let you stay in Australia?'
Mary Jo asked. When there was no response, she glanced over to see if she had heard the question.
‘Lily?'

‘In Australia?'
Lily looked at her hands, the thick black line of dirt under her broken nails the least of her worries. She wondered how her hands had suddenly become so old. She then looked over at Mary Jo.
‘If
they let me stay, I will get a job. If I'm able, I would like to finish my studies.'

She tried to clear her throat, without success.

‘Did you have a boyfriend back home?'
Mary Jo tried to encourage the conversation with difficulty. She moved her tongue around inside her dry mouth, wishing she had kept the peppermints till now.

‘I didn't have time for a boyfriend,'
Lily said, her voice coming and going.

Her tongue searched for saliva. She needed to spit.

‘Tell me about you two,'
Mary Jo tried. Exhausted as she was, Lily came alert, viewed the foreigner suspiciously, then glanced across at Hani. Seeing that she was asleep, Lily nodded wearily.

‘There's not much more to tell,'
she lied, now wary. ‘
We met at college, like
I said. That's all.'
This exchange caused her to cough harshly, the lining of her throat felt scratched.

‘Lily, I would like to ask you about your story,'
Mary Jo tried to put the younger woman at ease.
‘It will help keep us awake. There has to be another
ship come by soon.'

‘My story?'
Lily seemed confused. She tried to clear her throat but there was nothing there but the feeling of sandpaper.
‘I don't have a story.'

She looked longingly at the distant horizon, wishing she could see land.

‘Why?'

Mary Jo tried to smile but her cracked and swollen lips prevented this.

For a moment she thought of discontinuing the attempt, fighting the overwhelming fatigue which threatened them all.
‘Because I would like to understand what it might be like, to have been in your position,'
she said. Again, there was no immediate response. She could see Lily was also desperately tired.

‘My position?'
Lily squinted, then coughed, imagining that her tongue was swollen. If only she could spit!

‘Yes, Lily,'
Mary Jo coaxed, her voice as hoarse as ever.
‘what it was like
to be Chinese, in Java?'
Lily stared blankly, as if she had not heard. Mary Jo made one final effort to engage her.
‘It's okay, Lily, you don't have to talk
to me if you don't want to.'
Minutes dragged by, and Mary Jo hoped from her silence that Lily was considering the question. She rubbed at muscle twisted nerves, moving her head painfully from side to side, then forward as her hand gently massaged her sunburned neck, finding no relief.

‘You want me to tell you what it's like to be Chinese in Indonesia?'
she heard Lily ask. Mary Jo responded by leaning over and placing her palm on Lily's arm.

‘Only if you're up to it.'
She looked at Lily, her eyes filled with pain. She nodded again. Somewhere behind seagulls announced their presence, distracting both. They stretched their necks to look but could see nothing.

‘Will you write about what I tell you?'
Lily's voice was but a whisper, glancing over to where Hani lay sleeping.

‘Yes, that's what I'd like to do.'
Mary Jo knew she would most probably forget most of what might be said. She felt so goddamn tired!

‘And then everyone would know?'
Lily asked, drawing on reserves to force herself to crouch. Her legs had gone to sleep.

‘No one would know that what I wrote came from you.'

‘Why?'
Lily countered, now curious. She wriggled her toes and fingers slowly to restore circulation.

‘Because I would not mention your name unless you said it was okay.'
Mary Jo followed suit, moving her toes ever so slowly, discovering for the first time how badly bruised her ankles were. Unconsciously, her hand touched the ugly purple skin but she felt no pain.

‘I don't mind,'
Lily said, after a few moments,
‘but I don't think you would
understand.'
Lily hesitated but not from the strain of talking.
‘You are a
foreigner. How could you possibly understand?'

Mary Jo thought about this for a minute or two before replying, mustering as much energy as she could to keep the conversation flowing.

‘If you mean I don't know what it's like to live as a Chinese in Indonesia, I
admit that is true.'
She paused, catching her breath.
‘Would you like to try to
tell me something more of your family and your life before you left?'
She then waited, exhausted from the effort.

‘Okay, Mary Jo,'
she agreed, extreme weariness evident in her tone.

With considerable effort, Lily moved closer so as not to be overheard and to preserve her voice, reduced already to but a hoarse whisper.

* * * *

Somehow, through the following hours, they found the words to communicate together, breaking to rest their parched throats, stopping when it was obvious that one or the other had lost track of the conversation either from fatigue, the debilitating heat or Mary Jo's limited vocabulary.

This story varied dramatically from what Lily had said before, when she had dragged them from the ocean and kept Mary Jo company through their first night. Lily started, her words staggered but coherent, her voice struggling to finish the story she wanted Mary Jo to hear. But she recounted nothing of her final days in Jakarta, for these had been permanently locked behind the window to her mind, the dark terrifying memory of her near death and rape, too personal, too shameful for Lily to relate.

Finally, when her voice gave out, she simply stopped, tried to clear her throat again, then rested.

In that short time, Mary Jo came to understand something of the hardships faced by Indonesian ethnic Chinese who had managed to survive in the face of adversity, at the wrong end of the economic spectrum. She listened, as Lily told her story from childhood, from when she was raised in the small East Java town of Situbondo, recalling her earliest memories of school, family and friends. But unbeknown to Mary Jo, this rendition had been deliberately softened, as Lily was not about to reveal all to someone she had only just met.

Mary Jo's heart went out to Lily when she heard part of her story, amazed at the resilience of this young Chinese woman and her family.

Mary Jo suddenly wondered why she had not taken the time, nor made the effort to approach the Chinese situation from a more personal perspective before. It just seemed that from the first moment she had stepped foot inside this country, there was just no time to sit and consider what the country's problems were really all about. The initial explosion of violence was political, not because of racial tensions. How did it all go so wrong?

Lily finished her story by relating some of the events leading up to when her uncle in Jakarta had offered to provide for a higher education.

There were no such facilities in Situbondo, she had explained.

‘It was my only opportunity to escape,'
she said, resting her voice before continuing. ‘
My parents were not wealthy. I was very lucky to have an uncle to
help.'
She paused, turned her head, just to make sure that Mary Jo had not fallen asleep.
‘Chinese families are like that,'
she said. A few minutes passed before she continued.
‘We just try and help each other because no one else will.'

Lily was now dreadfully tired but that was not the reason she had no desire to continue.

Mary Jo heard every word and from the corner of her eye she could see Lily looking at Hani as she spoke.

‘I think we should rest, now.'

‘We should drink, Mary Jo,'
Lily suggested and, without waiting for a response, dragged her bottom slowly down the sloping deck to retrieve the plastic water can. She gripped the handle and pulled the almost empty jerry can back up to where they had been resting. ‘
Hani, can you hear me?'

she called, while unscrewing the cap, passing this to Mary Jo to hold as they had done before. She waited for the gentle swell motion to pass, then held the container with both hands, pouring what amounted to a spoon-ful of water into the cap.
‘Hani,'
she called, this time louder with a hint of annoyance in her raspy voice.

Mary Jo waited as Hani slowly raised her head, and stared groggily around.

‘Water?'
she asked, her voice shaky, verging on delirious. Mary Jo slid down gradually and held the half filled cap full of water to her lips with one hand, while assisting with the other. The ache in her shoulder had lessened and for that much Mary Jo was grateful. Both Lily and Mary Jo then each took their ration of water and once the cap had been screwed tightly back on Lily held the can up with one hand to show the others that it was now all gone.

Mary Jo sensed that now Lily might have regretted having saved them.

Alone, the water would have lasted her days. She knew that this must have crossed Lily's mind as well and moved to thank her again for what she had done.

‘We'd both be dead now if it hadn't been for you, Lily.'
This was followed by an echoing silence. Lily did not believe Mary Jo's words required a response.

‘I'm tired now,'
she said,
‘we can talk again later.'
With which, Lily moved away from where she had been sitting and rested, her throat not as dry as before. Mary Jo followed suit, noticing that Hani had fallen back to sleep again, suggesting that of the three, her condition was the most serious. With no respite from the torturous, burning mid-afternoon sun, they conserved what energy remained, an occasional lethargic movement the only indication to the birds gliding with the thermals in the sky high above that there was still life aboard the half-submerged trawler.

* * * *

Lily rolled to one side, exhausted. She knew that it was imperative now, to conserve energy. Her eyes wandered. The sea lapped at her feet, tempting her to swim. She looked up, momentarily blinded by the sun, then closed her eyes. She could still see the huge, bright shape burning through her eyelids. The sea was windless, her head ached and her thirst demanded that she soon drink.

An image of her mother intruded and for a lingering moment she thought it real. Someone coughed. Lily's lips attempted a sickly smile when she realized that it was she who had made the dry, barking noise.

Saliva stuck to the roof of her dry, tongue-swollen mouth and she tried to avoid thinking about her thirst. She heard Hani groan, wondering how long it would take her to die without water. Her mind clouded even further by the stifling, dehydrating sun's effect, she leaned back considering how far she would have to swim to save herself.

Lily caught some movement from the corner of her eye as Hani came into focus and her heart hardened. She had made a mistake. She should have left the two of them in the water to drown. In her debilitated state, her mind skipped and she found herself talking out aloud. But no one listened. Later, in a more lucid state, she looked over again at the prostrate form of the West Javanese girl and shook her head with what little energy remained, the question on her mind what would Hani have done had their roles been reversed?