Fearless Read online

  It all came down to the tone of her voice, Janelle had learned. Sincere but not obsequious, friendly yet professional. But it was the nuances of interviewee psychology that had kept her engaged. Why had that mother with the colicky baby actually agreed to do a twenty-minute survey on global tobacco regulation? Whatever could have made that middle-aged man care so deeply about nonstick frypans? And was it loneliness that made that suspiciously elderly-sounding woman fudge her age—claiming to be within the required parameter of thirty-five and under—just to talk to someone, albeit about carbon sequestration?

  ‘So why did you quit?’ asked the man, pushing a packet of crisps in Janelle’s direction.

  Why indeed? She took a few and crammed them into her mouth. She wasn’t hungry, but there was something comforting in their oily saltiness. Nick certainly wouldn’t have approved of the extra kilos she’d gained since their break-up, but that was immaterial now.

  ‘I’ve just had my twenty-ninth birthday,’ she explained between mouthfuls, ‘and I realised I’d been stuck in a rut for more than a year.’

  Her persistent pining for Nick had been unproductive and unreasonable, given everything that hadn’t been working for them. Like the way they’d sat across restaurant tables from each other, maintaining an aloof silence usually reserved for long-married couples. Or Nick’s predilection for working from home at night and triathlon training on the weekends, which almost always trumped sex and sleep-ins.

  After they’d parted ways, she’d fallen into a post-Nick pattern that somehow morphed into her daily life. Waking tired, having a shower, eating breakfast, taking her contraceptive pill—for what, exactly?—before heading in to work. Struggling through eight hours in an underwhelming job with a faux-impressive title—Senior Specialist, Business and Consumer Research—before returning from the office to her studio apartment in Moorabbin. Checking Facebook obsessively, eating too much, watching Netflix until after midnight, then falling asleep on the sofa. A routine interspersed occasionally with nights out with girlfriends, the odd exercise session, or catch-ups with her family.

  She’d been marooned in this humdrum routine—like a modern-day Sisyphus—until the morning of her twenty-ninth birthday, when she’d been sitting at the kitchen table eating an unappetising breakfast of slightly stale Bircher muesli. Hunched over her mobile phone, senselessly scrolling through Nick’s picture-perfect posts from Seville.

  Suddenly, as if her fingers were possessed by an external power, she’d deleted the Facebook app. ‘Yes, I am sure I want to remove it,’ she’d muttered in response to the warning prompt. ‘Enough is enough.’ She opened her internet browser and typed into the search engine the words that had been roiling in her head for months: How do I …

  The auto-prompt intervened with a convenient drop-down menu of most frequently searched terms: How do I look? How do I get pregnant? Then, strangely: How do I get you alone? A song title, Janelle could only assume, before continuing typing her own question: How do I … change my life? A link on the first results page drew her eye:

  Change your life in Bali—join a Fearless retreat!

  Clicking through to the homepage, Janelle had found herself transfixed by an idyllic scene of terraced rice fields. A granite statue of the Buddha dominated the foreground, surrounded by a carefully raked mandala of smooth white pebbles. Alongside it stood a tall, ascetic-looking man with intense blue eyes and an engaging smile. New Fearless retreat starts 1 March in Bali—sign up now! the website had urged her. The timing was perfect, allowing her just enough time to resign and work out her notice, but not enough to change her mind.

  Janelle glanced sideways at the European. The double whammy of the alcohol and drugs—combined with the trauma of the turbulence—was loosening her inhibitions.

  ‘I had to do something differently,’ she continued, ‘because I just couldn’t keep going the way I was.’ With a boring job and a broken heart. ‘Facing my fear of flying seemed like a good place to start. I booked a ticket to Bali, even though I was scared stiff of getting on a plane. When I get back to Australia, I’ll have to start looking for another job.’

  She’d be okay for a while. Her mortgage was manageable, and she’d listed her studio on Airbnb for the duration of her month away, which made the entire exercise cost-neutral. Unless someone trashed the studio, she mused uneasily.

  The man chuckled. ‘But you know that flying is the safest form of transport? It’s much more likely you’ll be killed in a cab on your way into Kuta. Indonesians are crazy on the roads.’

  ‘I’m not staying in Kuta,’ Janelle replied, unsure if this technicality mattered.

  ‘Wherever you’re staying, they’re all crazy,’ the man said vehemently. ‘I live in Seminyak with my wife. Very often we see blood on the road.’

  ‘Blood?’ Janelle flinched.

  ‘They don’t wear motorbike helmets, you see. When they do, they don’t bother doing up the chin strap. They don’t value life the same way we do.’ He waved an index finger at her and Janelle was tempted to relieve him of any notion of ‘we’. ‘If you hire a motorbike, make sure they give you a helmet too.’

  Janelle sipped her vodka calmly. ‘I won’t be riding motorbikes.’

  The man clicked his tongue knowingly. ‘That’s what all the tourists say, but then they get excited seeing the Balinese on motorbikes. Where are you staying?’

  ‘In Ubud for a week, on retreat. After that, I’m not sure.’

  The man nodded. ‘Ubud is nice, it’s cooler in the hills. I have some business interests up there. A yoga retreat?’

  Janelle shook her head. ‘Actually, it’s for people with phobias and … other anxieties.’ Feeling a little embarrassed, she switched the conversational focus to him. ‘What are you doing in Bali?’

  ‘As little as possible,’ the man joked. ‘I live there. I am from Portugal originally, my wife is Balinese. Our sons are studying at university in Australia—I’ve just settled our second boy in Melbourne. My wife’s family has land all over Bali. We have a few enterprises.’

  Janelle nodded. ‘And are they … doing well?’

  The man sucked on an ice cube, then let it slip back into his cup. ‘It depends on the enterprise. We have a handful of villas in Lovina, some adventure companies in the east, a wildlife sanctuary …’

  Janelle blinked—she’d been enquiring about the man’s sons in Australia, not his business concerns in Bali. But her interest was piqued. ‘Your wildlife sanctuary—it’s not orangutans by any chance?’ she asked. ‘I sponsor an orangutan in Borneo. It’s terrible what’s happening to their habitat.’

  The man shook his head. ‘Reptiles and birds, mainly. Some of the rarest birds in Indonesia. A nice little sanctuary, too, but my wife wants to sell it. There’s talk of a second international airport being built in the area. We could get more money for the birds on the black market than from running the sanctuary.’ He shrugged. ‘Bali is one big black market, you know. Trust people at your own risk. They’re usually not as nice as they seem at first.’

  Just like you, thought Janelle.

  ‘It’s hard to find trustworthy staff,’ continued the man. ‘We pay them more than the minimum wage, but many times we have caught staff members stealing. That is how they repay us for treating them well.’ He took another mouthful of his drink and winced. ‘This is cattle-class vodka. Terrible quality.’

  ‘I’ve heard the Balinese are very honest and gentle,’ Janelle objected, motioning to her Lonely Planet Guide to Bali, tucked in the seat pocket in front of her.

  ‘Gentle? Ha! You should see my wife on payday. Gentle is not the right word. No one screws with her. Except for me, of course.’ He laughed at his own joke.

  Do men like this go to Asia to find wives, Janelle mused, because no one wants them in their home countries?

  ‘Have you and your wife … always lived in Bali?’ she asked, skirting around her suspicion.

  ‘Not always, but long enough for her to take everything I own and d
ivide it among her family.’ The man’s belly shook as he laughed. ‘Don’t worry, I know what you’re thinking: some old Portuguese man marries a young Balinese girl who doesn’t know any better. Well, let me tell you—she is the boss of our family. Oh, yes, they all look so demure in their sarongs, so devout at the temple. But try marrying one, then you’ll understand the real Bali.’

  Janelle wished she could extricate herself from the conversation.

  ‘I’m Diego, anyway,’ he said, reaching out to shake her hand. ‘I should have introduced myself earlier. It’s a pleasure to meet you.’

  ‘Janelle,’ she said, nodding politely. She retrieved her phone from the seat pocket. ‘I was just about to brush up on my Indonesian.’

  She’d downloaded a language refresher course a few days earlier, and now seemed exactly the right time to begin. Her head was fuzzy, and Diego was grating on her. ‘Excuse me,’ she said, before inserting her earphones.

  Selamat pagi. Good morning.

  Apa kabar? How are you?

  Baik-baik saja. I’m fine.

  Mau ke mana? Where are you going?

  Jalan-jalan saja. For a walk.

  Terima kasih. Thank you.

  It all came flooding back. Janelle hadn’t heard the language since high school, when she’d chosen to study Indonesian in year nine, as an alternative to French. Her study of the latter had been disastrous—all those nasal vowels, uvular r sounds and gendered nouns—while Indonesian had seemed easier, with relatively uncomplicated grammar and phonetic pronunciation.

  ‘Siapa namanya?’ she whispered under her breath. ‘Nama saya Janelle. Saya berasal dari Australia.’

  One of her earphones popped out; she moved to retrieve it and realised that Diego had pulled it out. He leaned close enough for her to smell his boozy breath—or was it hers?

  ‘I was just going to say,’ he said in a low voice, ‘the only words you ever really need to know in Bahasa Indonesia are “Suapnya berapa, Pak?”—“How much for the bribe, sir?”’ He pulled his thin lips back again into a smile. ‘Those words will always get you out of trouble in Bali, so don’t forget them.’

  She nodded distantly, then turned up the volume.

  Emerging from customs three hours later into stifling equatorial heat, Janelle stared up at richly sculpted red-brick gates marking the terminal exit. She screwed up her nose at the sickly-sweet scent of incense that hung in the air, and watched, daunted, as a mob of drivers jostled behind the barrier ahead of her.

  Her hand moved to the small black pouch strung across her body, containing her passport and phone. She reread the email from Tony van de Jaager, the Fearless facilitator:

  On arrival in Denpasar, you will be met by our English-speaking driver, Pak Ketut. He will bring you in our resort’s air-conditioned minibus to Ubud, located a pleasant 1.5 hour drive from the airport.

  Scanning the crowd again, her eyes settled on a fluorescent green cardboard sign inscribed with her name. It was held aloft by a diminutive man wearing a sarong, a collared shirt and an unusual hat—rather like a rolled-up silver scarf curled around his scalp—standing near the back of the mob.

  Janelle waved to the man and he beamed at her, rushing forward and ducking beneath the barricade to greet her. ‘Miss Janelle, welcome to Bali!’ The skin around his eyes crinkled as he smiled. ‘My name is Pak Ketut.’

  ‘Selamat sore,’ Janelle replied, allowing him to take command of her luggage trolley. ‘Terima kasih.’

  ‘Ah! You speak Indonesian?’

  ‘Sedikit saja.’ Only a little.

  ‘Very, very good!’ His enthusiasm was infectious.

  ‘I’m sure your English is better than my Indonesian, Pak Ketut,’ she replied. ‘I need some practice.’

  ‘No problem.’ Pak Ketut ushered her along a footpath, past a line of cars and towards a white minibus parked nearby. ‘It is a long drive to Ubud, we can practise together. How was your flight?’

  ‘Very rough. We flew into a storm.’ Janelle still felt drugged, her tongue furry. ‘I’m scared of flying, so I didn’t enjoy it at all.’

  ‘Oh, I am sorry. But you have come to the right place, to become fearless!’ The driver opened the boot of the minibus and lifted Janelle’s luggage inside. ‘What are you afraid of, when you fly?’

  ‘Crashing, primarily.’ She laughed, which was much easier to do on the ground. ‘Have you ever flown, Pak Ketut?’

  ‘Me?’ Pak Ketut looked amused. ‘One day, when I am rich. Or maybe not.’ He leaned towards her, as if to reveal a secret. ‘There are many things to fear on the ground already, Miss Janelle. Enough for me, without adding things in the air.’ He laughed again, but Janelle felt as though she’d missed the joke.

  ‘Please,’ he said, opening the minibus door and motioning her inside. A wave of blissfully cool air washed over Janelle as she sank gratefully into the seat behind him.

  As they moved into the flow of traffic beyond the airport, Janelle gawked at something ahead. An entire family was perched on a single motorcycle: father driving, mother at the rear balancing bags on both knees, two children wedged in between them, and a sleeping infant with its head slumped on the handlebars, its tiny hands wrapped around the stem of the rear-view mirror. None of them wore helmets, and Janelle winced at the sight of their unprotected feet in thongs.

  A moment later, she saw a long line of female workers at a construction site, carrying large tin buckets of rocks on their heads.

  ‘Is that common here?’ asked Janelle, horrified to see women her mother’s age carrying such heavy loads. ‘Women as labourers, I mean?’

  ‘If you get the men to do it, they sit and drink coffee and smoke,’ Pak Ketut said. ‘Women are much stronger and cheaper.’ He laughed again. ‘Very different in Bali to your country?’

  ‘Very,’ said Janelle, feeling uneasy.

  ‘Ayo mari kita berbahasa Indonesia.’ Pak Ketut grinned at her in the rear-view mirror.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘You said you wanted to practise. Let’s speak Indonesian!’

  Over the next hour and a half, Janelle subjected Pak Ketut to her best linguistic efforts. She explained that she was an office worker from Melbourne, that she was belum menikah—not yet married—and that she lived not far from her mother, brother and niece in Moorabbin, a suburb near the beach.

  When they stopped for a few minutes in heavy traffic, Janelle scrolled through her iPhone photos. She found a snap of her teenage niece, Arabella—the selfie they’d taken at Half Moon Bay two nights previously—then leaned forward to show Pak Ketut.

  ‘This is my niece,’ she said proudly. ‘Her name is Arabella.’

  ‘Very nice,’ he remarked.

  ‘Do you have family?’ She attempted the words in Indonesian. ‘Pak Ketut punya keluarga?’

  The driver said nothing for a moment. ‘My wife died eight years ago. She had kolera—what is that, in English?’

  ‘Cholera, the same.’ Janelle felt terrible. ‘But it’s … not something we have in Australia anymore.’

  ‘No?’ He looked surprised. ‘In Bali, we have much kolera.’

  Janelle stared out the window, feeling chastened. Food and water contaminated with human excreta was not a challenge she had to contend with in her privileged Melbourne existence.

  He looked at her again in the rear-vision mirror. ‘My wife was thin already,’ he explained. ‘The sickness took her quickly. Many people in our village died that year.’

  ‘And you had no children?’ She didn’t attempt the Indonesian words.

  Pak Ketut reached behind the sun visor above him and removed a faded photograph. A young girl with long black plaits and a shy smile, wearing a tan-coloured school uniform, sat side-saddle on a motorbike behind her father. Pak Ketut tapped the photo with his thumb, his eyes on the road. ‘This is my daughter. Her name is Putri. She is fifteen here.’

  Janelle smiled. ‘Arabella is fifteen too. It’s a nice age, isn’t it?’

  Pak Ketut nodded. ‘Be
fore the blood fever.’

  Janelle blanched. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘From mosquito bite. I think you call it dengue fever?’

  ‘Oh no,’ murmured Janelle. ‘Did she … ?’

  ‘Yes.’ He continued to stare at the road. ‘She would be eighteen now.’

  Tears sprang into Janelle’s eyes and she leaned forward in her seat, not knowing what to say. Wanting to touch Pak Ketut’s forearm, but worried about the cultural appropriateness of this. To lose a wife and a daughter to preventable diseases—how could the driver even smile anymore? She opened her mouth but then, loath to trot out some useless aphorism, closed it again. She knew from personal experience that time did not heal all wounds. Things would not necessarily be okay.

  Her own father had died when she was fourteen, after a short and unwinnable battle with stage four liver cancer, leaving a giant-sized gap in their family. Almost overnight, her mother had changed, filling the void he’d left behind with irrational, ritualised behaviour—from midnight cleaning frenzies and alphabetising the contents of their bookcases, to an unfounded dread of crowds and driving at night. Her mother’s previously manageable fear of flying progressed to a severe phobia that grounded her permanently; she’d never flown since. Fifteen years on, Janelle could still recall the warm reassurance of her father’s embrace, the comforting scent of his aftershave. Death changed everything, she knew.

  ‘That … must have been terrible for you,’ said Janelle, floundering.

  Pak Ketut shrugged. ‘I am Hindu, we believe in karma. You understand?’

  Janelle wasn’t sure that she did.

  ‘When it is time to die, it is time to die,’ he said. ‘You must accept your destiny. This is what Hindus believe.’

  Perhaps every culture had its neat, reductive adages to help the bereaved grapple with loss: destiny, fate, God’s will.

  ‘Many people in my village tell me to marry again,’ Pak Ketut continued. ‘They say, why are you waiting so long? There are many willing women. But it is not so easy to choose a wife.’ He shook his head. ‘It is not like going to a restaurant and choosing nasi goreng or mie goreng.’ He shrugged again. ‘I am waiting for the right one.’ ‘Me too,’ said Janelle softly, staring out at the passing vista. The bland concrete sprawl of Denpasar had given way to patches of countryside; of rice fields and coconut palms, red-brick temples and golden-green bamboo fences, and tall, brightly coloured flags staked into the earth, fluttering about in the day’s waning light.