His Way

After arriving this chap stood off from the entrance and delivered the old classic his way in a kind of resonant undertone. Man had a voice, the basis of something. It was a little hard to judge properly. Also in possession was a well-strung guitar that might even have been tuned. Some of the lyrics the young man may have fumbled and blurred; hard again to tell. Bit off more than I could shoe...? It didn’t matter—the surge of the rising lyric channelled around the corner from where he stood to the four tables within and strengthened progressively. But through it all.... There had been numerous performers one after the other with very little pause between them this Friday afternoon after the long fast that had shut the larger part of Sabang. The office workers’ lunch hour was short, no time could be lost. Some of the eateries had signs posted prohibiting entry to buskers; even the Padang place that had been patronised a number of times, only noticed that day. The large double table in the back corner that had been relinquished to the Chinese chaps had resisted all the earlier performers. The Frankie homage though deserved something one of the men there thought, calling the Busker over for the Rp2k. (Unless it had perhaps been two twos bundled together.) Rain had fallen earlier, twenty minutes of downpour that left people stranded beneath make-shift cover wherever it could be found. Many had been thoroughly doused and were drying off slowly. A panama offered little protection in such weather, in short order creating a saturated ring that clamped the cranium. Prior to the Frankie tribute the plastics collector who had been encountered a few days before resting in the shade of a tree by the Bunderan a couple of kilometres away had stood bareheaded in the rain out front of the café. What the man thought he was doing there for long minutes remained a mystery. The man stood as if in a daze, unaware of the rain. You would have expected a stream of water running down his front like on a rock face beneath a waterfall. A tall and broad surface the man presented, standing firm and motionless. Shelter might be taken by beggars, vagrants, plastic fossickers anywhere along Sabang; no-one would begrudge them. Yet this man held his place under the relentless rain, his thick black hair taking some sheen together with his beard; on his drab clothing somehow all the moisture was absorbed. Eventually his girl—mistaken for a child a couple of days before opposite him beneath the tree—appeared from this side of the street. Crossing to him she came with a red umbrella she had procured from somewhere. With the aid of her man the girl mounted their cart, sat herself high on one of the bundles and unfurled the umbrella. Between the arms of the cart in front where the man moved the umbrella did not stretch. The wheels of the lady’s carriage began to turn and off the pair slowly went up against the traffic in the gutter toward Sarina. It did not appear to be a new umbrella; not bought just then. Buying anywhere on Sabang—a Chinese enclave that included an early Robinsons store—would be expensive…. times I'm sure you knew…. The Busker may possibly have preceded the Plastics man on that dramatic Friday stage. With the latter however the triumph of love outstripped by far the corny fakery of the earlier age, that story of the Hoboken boy storming the great city on the other side of the globe. The Busker’s fine delivery was properly earned and justified only by the spectacle of the Plastics man and his wife. The Plastics man was given due honour and appropriate fanfare on that street by the honest Javanese crooner. The latter had found an appreciative audience among the patrons at Saudagar Café. Many of the buskers put in lazy, perfunctory performances; this man had given the complete song, as far as he could remember. In that office quarter it had played well for him before perhaps. The interlude returned to mind the acknowledgement the hill people of Western Montenegro gave the singer. Ko pjeva zlo ne misli, they commonly said on those high peaks. — (He) who sings bears no evil. In those old generations up in the wilds what that hill people could have known of song had long been a question