PASSION PLAY EXTRACT

A Visit to the Devastated Area

The summer palace of the Rajah has fallen into disrepair. Paint flakes off the once white building. Some little boys fish listlessly in a moat choked with green slime.

All along the way, Roger and I pass the ruins of burnt-out houses. On each house the word “Christen” has been written with a rough drawing of a rosary.

By this ruse, the Chinese inhabitants of the houses had hoped, unsuccessfully evidently, to indicate they were Christians, not Communists.

Roger and I had heard a lot of weird stories. It was said the Communists had a death list of thousands of names. All these people were to be gathered at the soccer oval, marched three times around, then slaughtered with knives.

In the counter-coup, it all got mixed up with other things, black magic, personal vendettas. It was a chance to get back at your neighbour for that grudge you’d been holding all these years.

It was said the Communist leaders could not be killed. They could make their bodies like iron, repelling bullets. They could only be killed by being wrapped in the rattan cages used for taking pigs to market and then dropped into the sea from helicopters.

*

At the bus station we hire a pony trap and wind down towards the sea under the shadow of Gunung Agung, the volcano which has recently erupted, its peak shrouded in mist.

We pass people sitting by the side of the road, as if lost in a dream. Limp, despondent, as if still stunned by the eruption which had occurred some months ago. They watch us pass in silence, following us with their eyes.

As in all violent catastrophes, the hand of fate is writ large. Destiny, chance, everywhere evident.

I recall stories I have heard of wars, how the shell hit this house, but spared that one. The person who should never have been in a certain place was killed, while the one who should have been there was accidentally detained and miraculously spared.

So it was with the lava flow from Gunung Agung, now a congealed black river flowing to the sea. Here it had gone around a little shrine of thatch and bamboo. Here spared someone’s house or ricefield, while all the others had been destroyed.

*

We come down to a beach of black volcanic sand. Outrigger canoes, eyes painted on their prows, are drawn up on the beach like a row of insects, crouching spiders.

We eat our picnic lunch beneath a cliff from which, high above us, a carving of a rhinoceros leaps rampant into space.

On the way back, a dwarf with a twisted spine comes running from the gate of a compound and chases behind our pony trap.

He’s dressed in ceremonial brocades, with a keris in his sash. He scuttles along behind us for a while, like a dog, then falls away.

© Harris Smart, 2003

Please let us know what you thought, and we will pass on your comments to the author. Remember to enter a valid email address along with your comments.

Click to return to the top of the page.