SUNSET OVER BOROBUDUR

SUNSET OVER BOROBUDUR

I'd never met her before, all I knew was that she was married to my brother. I'd not even seen pictures of her, they'd only been married for three months and both of them had a deep distrust of Facebook.
I knew she was half Indonesian and half Dutch or something. I'd been in Norway at the time of my brother's wedding and in our last conversation on Skype we had arranged a cycling holiday around the south of Java from Borobudur to Prambanan. We had done it before when we were young and since Emma was the adventurous type she had wanted to join us.
I should explain. Myself and my brother are Sundanese, the people of west Java. My name is Agus Zam Ghusa. I am tall for a Sundanese and with my high cheek bones and broad nose I have been told I would make a good extra in a kung-fu film as one of the villains. I've also been told that I can be a bit intimidating to people when they first meet me because of my appearance, but that's only at first. I am actually quite shy.
But there she was, stepping off the train into the roasting heat of the Stasiun Tugu, a rucksack on her back and pulling a mountain bike off the carriage behind her.
I groaned inwardly. She was blonde. I had not been expecting that, she looked like a bule. In my language a 'bule' is literally an albino but we apply it to all white skinned people. This would give the holiday a different texture. Wherever we went, she would be treated like a 'bule gila' (crazy white person) and me as her guide.
Well, ok I thought, that's fine, but then something even more alarming hit me like a thunderbolt. She reached behind her into the train and lifted out a little boy.
He was as blonde as her and obviously her son. He was about two years old and nuzzled into her chest as she carried him down and onto the baking platform. He was as cute as you could possibly imagine, all Indonesians cannot resist blonde bule babies and he was drawing a lot of attention.
I stepped forward through the crowd and helped her with her bicycle.
'Emma?' I asked.
'Yes.', she smiled warily, 'You must be Agus?'
'Ah yes, Anto never mentioned .. a .. a boy?'
She seemed puzzled, 'No? I did tell him I was taking Jake.'
I smiled and nodded, half bowing.
I straightened up though, remembering she was family, I didn't have to treat her like a venerable old lady.
In my country bules are treated like sacred animals, tourists who bring money into our cities and onto our beaches. Slightly soft in the head in the way that old people can be, but like old people to be treated with the utmost respect.
My dumb smile remained though. I now noticed the child's seat on the back of her
bike,
'It will be a hot trip for a little boy.'
'Oh we've brought everything he needs. He's looking forward to it.', she replied.
The first leg of the journey would take us to a campsite where we would meet Anto and go the rest of the way to Borobudur.
I was looking forward to seeing those ancient Buddhist temples once more, the serenely smiling statues looking out over the jungle and the terraced stone galleries leading up to an exquisite view across to the volcano. I am a Muslim, but I am profoundly moved by Borobudur's calm spirituality.
And so we set off, me taking the lead, using a GPS and a map although I knew the way. Emma behind, struggling to keep up in the heat and carrying the extra burden of her son who gabbled away happily behind her.
I was burning to ask her about how she had come to have a child. I was also furious with my brother for not telling me about this incredible fact, but I suppose he would have been afraid that I would have told our parents. He might have been right.
She was probably divorced, probably not a Muslim and I'm sure our mother would assume marrying Anto to get her son another father.
I cycled and pondered. It had just been one of those things meeting her off the train having never met her before, myself and my brother both had jobs in the oil industry, I lived in Aberdeen with my wife and Anto lived in New Zealand.
It was to do with when our jobs could let us go, flight times and a dozen other considerations that meant the best way to start off our holiday was for me to be the one to pick her up. The campsite was twenty kilometers away and I'd thought we would easily make it, but that was before I realised we would be taking a toddler along with us.
The fact that she was constantly stopping to fuss over him did not help either.
Water, snacks, sun hat on, sun hat off, I could see that whatever had happened to the boys father, she was trying to make up for his loss by smothering the child with love and even at two years old he could manipulate her masterfully.
After an hour I stopped and drank half a bottle of water,
'How is he?', I said. Smile. Nod. Oh stop it I thought, she's not a tourist.
'He seems fine now' she replied and stroked his face, 'I've been giving him lots of liquids. I'd forgotten how hot it gets here.'
'When were you last back?'
'Gosh' she said with a small smile, pulling the sweat soaked long blonde hair from her lips, 'It must have been ten years.'
We cycled on and several times I tried to make conversation, but she would start fussing over Jake or just give me one word answers so in the end I gave up.
At lunch time we stopped at a roadside warung and I ordered a diet coke and mie goreng (fried noodles). Emma had her own food and drink for her and Jake.
I ate quickly as I always do, shoving great spoonfuls messily into my mouth. It was while my mouth was full she chose to hit me with what had been bothering her,
'Your mother doesn't approve of me. Or Jake for that matter.'
I couldn't speak, but tried to swallow what was in my mouth as quickly as I could.
She continued, 'Anto never told me what she was like.'
'I'm not surprised', I managed, 'She's a bit of a handful.'
'I mean, what sort of woman has her maids approach her on their knees?'
I felt embarrassed but replied, 'She's related to the Yogja royal family, or so she thinks. You would say “Blue Blooded”.'
She gave me a dangerous look and I realised I'd said something wrong.
'And here we get to it', she all but snarled, 'You said “You” as if explaining to someone from a different country.”
“Ahh, I didn't mean it like that, I mean..' I had to stop because as I thought about it I did mean it like that. She was different to me and my entire family, she was a bule.
'I'm not different to you though.' she said, 'I've dyed my hair, I've used that stupidly dangerous skin bleaching soap. I'm just the same.'
'You don't speak bahasa though.'
Oh Agus! I thought, learn to think before you speak!
'No you're right, I don't and It was made very clear to me by your mother that that was another black mark against me.'
I began to think carefully as I started to wonder if I wasn't, at this stage, going to say something that might end my brother's marriage.
'I don't understand, why did you meet her at all? I thought you were in a hotel in Bandung?'
She shrugged then sighed. As she took out a yogurt pot from her rucksack and began spooning it into Jake's mouth she said,
'It seemed like a good idea at the time. It turned out though, that Anto hadn't told her about Jake either.'
I grimaced. I could imagine exactly how mother would have taken it.
She caught my look and said, 'Exactly'.
No wonder she'd been so quiet since she'd got off the train.
That evening I watched the sun set over the mountains of Borobudur from the highest point on the main stupa. Jake was on my knee almost asleep. Down the stairs and through and arch of Kala I could see Anto and Emma arguing. How could they in such a place?
I had been day dreaming about how nice it would be to have them all over to Aberdeen sometime. My two children would love Jake. He was a sweet child and we had had a great time exploring all the galleries and looking at the reliefs.
I'd forgotten about their quarrel as soon as we'd passed the Lion Gate Guardian.
Eventually Emma waved for me to bring him down and I carried his little sleeping body down to her, his sandaled feet tapping against my arm. I passed him over to her and I ruffled the boy's hair and kissed his forehead. Without a word she turned and carried him all the way down the stairs and into the gardens. I felt a tremendous sense of loss, turning to Anto I could see his heart had been broken.
Somehow they had not been able to talk past Anto's lies and attempts to hide things from our family. Emma had once lived as a bule, had lived with one and had had a child with one. Now she was finding it too hard to come back to her beginnings.
I looked down at my arm where Jake's sandals had left a line of dust. I rubbed it, then rolled the grains of sand around in my finger tips. When I looked up they had
gone.
I never saw Emma again.