"Back soon,
mbak
!" I called towards the kitchen.
"Jalan-jalan?"
-- "Going for a walk?" came Sri's voice, amid the clatter of pans and the scent of
terasi
and lemon grass.
"Is that OK?" I asked.
"Of course: Ningsih can help me with supper. Be back by sunset, though." Her voice, tinkling like
degung
, radiated trust and cheerfulness. My heart twinged briefly, but I dismissed the feeling with a deft and practiced gesture of moral legerdemain.
The forest was glorious -- hibiscus, white jasmine and
anggrek bulan
glimmering in the late, hot afternoon sunshine. But I wasn't really looking at them. Instead, my heart pounded as I delved deeper into the woods, jaw set with aching determination.
She sat the same place she did every evening, against the outer slope of a hollow marked out by some vine-encrusted temple ruins, on an andesite block adorned with rain-eroded bas-reliefs. She was pale and white -- whiter than anyone I had ever seen in these lands, even the earnest foreigners who occasionally tramped through the woods in search of lost
candi
. She turned to look at me -- no, actually, past me -- her red lips glowing against her white skin, eyes wide with inscrutable purpose and perspicacity, her crown of strange dried foreign flowers -- rosemary, pansies, fennel, columbines -- fragrant, but oddly grey compared with the colour in her cheeks and her bright, bright pale skin.
She wore what I can only describe as a singlet, apparently woven of filigree chains of silver -- finer even than from the smithies of Kotagede -- which covered her pale breasts. She said nothing, still apparently ignoring me as, barefoot, I stumbled clumsily down, past the decapitated statue of a multi-armed goddess, to stand and ogle.
Reaching downwards to touch her groin, she spread her pale white legs. For whom was she doing this? I wondered. Her eyes never met mine -- and I was too penis-absorbed to care. Instead she fixed her eyes on a black stone
Siva-lingam