A recent fantasy gnawing away at the edges in Jogja won't let go. (Blushingly it must be recorded.) At the upcoming reunion Nia on her knees clasping the legs of her lover, holding tight and imploring quietly in the sea-shell voice she managed sometimes on the phone particularly. You are my father now Pee.... Barely loud enough to hear. Cavernous voice like the priestesses of the old temples might have used. And Ni perhaps going on to add, The only one I have.... Remarkable. Riveting. Both on the phone and at one’s side Ni’s accent and mangled English often made her incomprehensible; then on other occasions perfect sense and often even sharp point. Holding fast as if to a mast; no tears and firm equally in grip and utterance. Nia would speak and act with such ease and simplicity there would be no room for awkwardness. (The only useful fantasies are those that have the realistic potential for fulfillment.) Erotic reaction inevitably, which Ni either intuits, or else independently moves in the same direction herself. One of our signal moments unfolded with this last as part of an earlier reunion, it might have been after the three months in Malaysia. By the doorway of the narrow room as usual Ni was received in the pink floral sarong, clasped close and squeezed tight. Another girl might have ignored the prod at her side for the moment. Ni's father had "fast away", she texted earlier in the month. (As usual the phone had been switched off, messages of any kind left for a time of one's choosing and at leisure.) One or two nights before Ni had heard her father's voice. She had not spoken to him, but heard him playing with his grandson, the son of Nia's brother, while Ni spoke to her own daughter in the same room. That was the last Nia would hear of her father's utterance, a man of good, simple life, she reported again by text a day or two later. She would of course miss the funeral. In the days afterward the daughter, an adopted young girl of eight, asked her mother, What is this life? ..... (So-and-so) dying like that and now kakek. (Earlier in the year an uncle, husband of Nia's older sister, had passed away after a brief illness.) In the figure on the floor clutching the legs of her lover there was housed too, like another Russian doll, the semblance of Anita, another lover, a wild, impulsive and reckless woman. Neet was the one who would more likely be granted her wish in this regard, if only she could be brought round. Neet had lost her father long ago; at one point in the bloom of the relationship Neet had said she needed a husband who could lead her through life. (A virtual relationship with an ustad, religious teacher had ended badly when the man married one of her friends. No Second Wife position for her, unlike Nia, who had volunteered the concession unasked.) Eighteen months before after some difficulties we had landed in a terrible muddle; now almost certainly there was no hope with Neet. The image of the girl on the floor worked for an Indon woman. In Java a man could reasonably fantasize about such devotion. With lovely Indon girls a lucky chap's hand could be taken for greeting or farewell and brought to the forehead, before being imprinted with an appreciative kiss. Ohya! From the same historical novel as the other. One would like to line up all the Western male readers one could find and walk down the aisle slowly turning to them with patient explanation, an immeasurable sea of figures like in the culmination of the Sokurov Hermitage film. Gentlemen, no writerly fantasy this of which you have read, let me assure you. Please understand and make no mistake. Truly, such is our poverty.
NB. Revised & expanded version published as “Gauguin Again” - Orca Literary Journal #1 2019 (US)
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