To his credit, he didn't just mean himself, though I believe he might be willing to take on the job. He assured me that Ian-that good-looking Welsh guy-would be a fine match for me, but there are other candidates, too. There's a chef from New York City, 'a great, big, muscular, confident fellow,' whom he thinks I might like. Really there are all sorts of men here, he said, all of them floating through Ubud, expatriates from everywhere, hiding out in this shifting community of the planet's 'homeless and assetless,' many of whom would be happy to see to it, 'my lovely darling, that you have a wonderful summer here.'
'I don't think I'm ready for it,' I told him. 'I don't feel like going through all the effort of romance again, you know? I don't feel like having to shave my legs every day or having to show my body to a new lover. And I don't want to have to tell my life story all over again, or worry about birth control. Anyway, I'm not even sure I know how to do it anymore. I feel like I was more confident about sex and romance when I was sixteen than I am now.'
'Of course you were,' Felipe said. 'You were young and stupid then. Only the young and stupid are confident about sex and romance. Do you think any of us know what we're doing? Do you think there's any way humans can love each other without complication? You should see how it happens in Bali, darling. All these Western men come here after they've made a mess of their lives back home, and they decide they've had it with Western women, and they go marry some tiny, sweet, obedient little Balinese teenage girl. I know what they're thinking. They think this pretty little girl will make them happy, make their lives easy. But whenever I see it happen, I always want to say the same thing. Good luck. Because you still have a woman in front of you, my friend. And you are still a man. It's still two human beings trying to get along, so it's going to become complicated. And love is always complicated. But still humans must try to love each other, darling. We must get our hearts broken sometimes. This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something.'
I said, 'My heart was broken so badly last time that it still hurts. Isn't that crazy? To still have a broken heart almost two years after a love story ends?'
'Darling, I'm southern Brazilian. I can keep a broken heart going for ten years over a woman I never even kissed.'
We talk about our marriages, our divorces. Not in a petty way, but just to commiserate. We compare notes about the bottomless depths of post-divorce depression. We drink wine and eat well together and we tell each other the nicest stories we can remember about former spouses, just to take the sting out of all that conversation about loss.
He says, 'Do you want to do something with me this weekend?' and I find myself saying yes, that would be nice. Because it would be nice.
Twice now, dropping me off in front of my house and saying goodnight, Felipe has reached across the car to give me a goodnight kiss, and twice now I've done the same thing-allowing myself to be pulled into him, but then ducking my head at the last moment and tucking my cheek up against his chest. There, I let him hold me for a while. Longer than is necessarily merely friendly. I can feel him press his face into my hair, as my face presses somewhere against his sternum. I can smell his soft linen shirt. I really like the way he smells. He has muscular arms, a nice wide chest. He was once a champion gymnast back in Brazil. Of course that was in 1969, which was the year I was born, but still. His body feels strong.
My ducking my head like this whenever he reaches for me is a kind of hiding-I'm avoiding a simple goodnight kiss. But it's also a kind of not-hiding, too. By letting him hold me at all during those long quiet moments at the end of the evening, I'm letting myself be held.
Which hasn't happened for a long time.
94
I asked Ketut, my old medicine man, 'What do you know about romance?'
He said, 'What is this, romance?'
'Never mind.'
'No-what it is? What this word means?'
'Romance.' I defined. 'Women and men in love. Or sometimes men and men in love, or women and women in love. Kissing and sex and marriage-all that stuff.'
'I not make sex with too many people in my life, Liss. Only with my wife.'
'You're right-that's not too many people. But do you mean your first wife or your second wife?'
'I only have one wife, Liss. She dead now.'
'What about Nyomo?'
'Nyomo not really my wife, Liss. She the wife of my brother.' Seeing my confused expression, he added, 'This typical Bali,' and explained. Ketut's older brother, who is a rice farmer, lives next door to Ketut and is married to Nyomo. They had three children together. Ketut and his wife, on the other hand, were unable to have any children at all, so they adopted one of Ketut's brother's sons in order to have an heir. When Ketut's wife died, Nyomo began living in both family compounds, splitting her time between the two households, taking care of both her husband and his brother, and tending to the two families of her children. She is in every way a wife to Ketut in the Balinese manner (cooking, cleaning, taking care of household religious ceremonies and rituals) except that they don't have sex together.
'Why not?' I asked.
'Too OLD!' he said. Then he called Nyomo over to relay the question to her, to let her know that the American lady wants to know why they don't have sex with each other. Nyomo about died laughing at the very thought of it. She came over and punched me in the arm, hard.
'I only had one wife,' Ketut went on. 'And now she dead.'
'Do you miss her?'
A sad smile. 'It was her time to die. Now I tell you how I find my wife. When I am twenty-seven years, I meet a girl and I love her.'
'What year was that?' I asked, desperate as always to figure out how old he is.
'I don't know,' he said. 'Maybe 1920?'
(Which would make him about a hundred and twelve by now. I think we're getting closer to solving this…)
'I love this girl, Liss. Very beautiful. But not good character, this girl. She only want money. She chase other boy. She never tell truth. I think she had a secret mind inside her other mind, nobody can see inside there. She stop to loving me, go away with other boy. I am very sad. Broken in my heart. I pray and pray to my four spirit brothers, ask why she not anymore love me? Then one of my spirit brothers, he tell me the truth. He say, 'This is not your true match. Be patient.' So I be patient and then I find my wife. Beautiful woman, good woman. Always sweet for me. Never once we argue, have always harmony in household, always she smiling. Even when no money at home, always she smiling and saying how happy she is to see me. When she die, I very sad in my mind.'
'Did you cry?'
'Only little bit, in my eyes. But I do meditation, to clean the body from pain. I meditate for her soul. Very sad, but happy, too. I visit her in meditation every day, even to kissing her. She the only woman I ever make sex with. So I do not know… what is new word, from today?'
'Romance?'
'Yes, romance. I do not know romance, Liss.'
'So it's not really your area of expertise, eh?'
'What is this, expertise? What this word means?'
95
