As one of the activities in the creative writing workshop in Jember last week, on Tuesday we drove 45 minutes (1/2 hours) to a beach on the southern coast of Java, a lovely and relatively secluded place where we were supposed to become inspired by “the nature.” It was truly beautiful, and another bule who had tagged along with us, and I, rented two masks and one snorkle from an outfit that apparently was somewhat equipped (we were the only snorklers that day), and we went out and swam around what used to be a coral reef before it had been dynamite fished in the past. There were little tidbits of glory amidst the shards of coral, but in general, sort of dispiriting, although the guy I was snorkling with, one of those travelers whose aspect is overwhelmingly positive no matter what, could not stop gushing about it.
I found, though, nestled between little pieces of broken bleached coral, a beautiful small sea shell, brown with light speckles on the top, those delicate sea shell groves on the bottom, smooth, and shiny. I inspected it to make sure it was empty – I had been trained years before to not remove anything living from the ocean – saw that it was empty, and pocketed it. Back on the shore I showed it off, my little prize, perhaps I would even write a little haiku about it in the spirit of the day (I did not – but I did write one about the dead coral). I was proud of my little shell, though, and imagined it one of my small mementoes of my year on Java.
(There were incredible boats floating in the small bay too, large wooden fishing boats, painted with bright colors and motifs and carved figures, tied, bobbing, beautiful and tranquil, though I imagine some of those motifs sought protection for the less tranquil times.)
We went to another beach too, where a long narrow outcrop known locally as Snake’s Head Rock jutted into the ocean, apparently the head of a prince whose princess was killed at sea by the jealous and evil witch who kind of runs the show on the southern coast of Java. (We were cautioned against wearing green, because this witch doesn’t like it and might make you drown, with that sort of semi-ironic tone sometimes taken by people who don’t really believe what they are saying but who nevertheless would not wear green no matter what. Needless to say I did not wear green.) There was a hotel that had fallen completely apart next to the coast, the victim of bankruptcy and scandal, according to one local, though another assured me that it was haunted, which was convincing because there was a statue of the witch in front of it, looking very threatening and angry on her horse.
No one drowned, and we drove back to the hotel. I stowed my shell in the bathroom, and went to dinner at the house of the University President, where we ate all sorts of Javanese delicacies that added to what became by the end of the week my Javanese Food Breakdown. On the ride home we drove for an extra hour while the group leaders tried to track down wine (barely successful, and highly overpriced, in a city of almost one million – for my next Fulbright, I’m going to investigate the cultural drinking habits before I make my request.)
The next morning, in the shower, I was shocked to find that there was a little piece of purplish flesh sticking out of the shell, the dead remains of whatever living being I had inadvertently removed from the sea. I washed it, sprayed it, tried to pry it out with something narrow, but I could not get the little carcass out, and by Thursday night, it was actually creating a stench that I think could have been the revenge of the witch from beach – when I came back from dinner, the bathroom smelled like an unsanitary fish market (I know this smell rather well at this point). I moved the shell outside, under the chair in front of my room, where I hoped that ants would clear it out (ants in this part of the world could clean the flesh off of a whale in a matter of minutes). I forgot about it, though, and perhaps it still sits there, under the chair.
My hotel room in Jember had a sink in the bathroom, with a faucet that didn’t work. Next to it, over the tile floor, was another faucet that did work but that did not empty into the sink. (Javanese bathrooms are just a sheet of tile, like a giant shower room – the whole thing gets wet.) This in itself – the faucet that didn’t work – is unremarkable, but it turned out that everyone else in the hotel also had a tap in the bathroom sink that didn’t work – “the false tap,” one of the participants called it. My room, alone among the rooms, also had a window in the back, and when I opened the curtains to let in the sun, I found that it actually looked out into the housekeeping closet, where the staff gathered at about 5 in the morning (one hour after the loudest and earliest and most ardent call to prayer in the entire Muslim world) to tell what were apparently highly amusing jokes with lots of sound effects.
I have come to think of the false tap as a sort of metaphor for some of the Indonesian hotels we have visited, in which some feature or another just doesn’t add up. There was the hotel in Flores, where we arrived after three days on a very bouncy and fairly crowded boat. None of their towels were dry, so we couldn’t shower. There was the hotel on the coffee plantation with lovely rooms and clouds of mosquitoes hovering above the bed at night. There was the hotel in Borobudur with the massive cockroach walking on the wall behind my wife’s head. (Moral dilemma: do you say something? Or just let it be and let her remain unaware? I said nothing, and the cockroaches scurried around for a little and then disappeared. But it was really big, and still scurries across the corners of my dreams from time to time.) The false tap reflects the sort make-shift nature of a lot in this country. In our house, we have two bathrooms, each with small hot water heaters, but if we plug in both of them, the power goes out.
It is near the end of the semester here, though I have just began a series of faculty workshops that will last several weeks, in which I am working with faculty across the university on their English writing. I’ll write about that later – it’s already been quite fun and engaging – but now I must stop and sleep. Good night.
Is Laura just now finding out about the cockroach by reading this?
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