The Mask

I never realized what it was till this very day. I had never thought about it. Whenever thinking of it, my mind always roams to a museum of primitive art and culture in a city. Today I am in a big city. It’s the seventh floor of the hotel. It is Singapore, not downtown but close to the heart of the city. The hotel has 12 floors and is brand new. I have a room on the seventh with a view.Skyscrapers and buildings under construction surround the hotel.
Night and day traffic is passing by. Who are the people staying in this hotel? I see them downstairs in the air conditioned hall, running in and out, calling taxi drivers and dragging luggage into the elevators which automatically speak: doors are open, doors are closing. Most of the guests are Asian, younger couples, families and children. Every day I go swimming at about four o’clock in the late afternoon. I walk straight from my room on the same floor to the swimming pool. After the swimming, I stay at the pool, hang over the wall around the terrace, watch the hotels, the skyscrapers and the sky. It’s a surrealistic place that mirrors a world I do not know. Most of the time it is rather hot on the terrace, but I sit down in the shade and don’t move, still refreshed by the swimming. Today, there is an elder couple, when I enter the terrace by the glass door alongside the gym. Nobody else, not a sportsman, a waiter or a guard. The couple doesn’t look up and I go for a swim. I breach the mirror, the mask of the pool. Then, I take a chair and look around. The pool restores the mirror and reflects also the chairs along its rim. Rain is nearing and it’s cooling off rapidly. The couple moves to this side of the swimming pool where I sit at a table. Without looking at them, I see everything they do, their movements, their smiling and their reflection in the water. The old man moves two stretchers close to each other, almost without any room in between. Slowly, the lady is going to sit and lie down carefully on her back, closing her eyes and waiting, drinking in the heat and the sounds. Firstly, the husband seems to remain sitting in the middle of the stretcher, but then he reclines on his left elbow, his back towards me. Though, I can see he wears reading glasses and is holding a book upright in his right hand. After a while, I hear him reading aloud but in a low voice. New people enter the place; nobody reacts or notices what the couple is doing. The old man continues his reading without looking up from the book. I hear people diving into the pool, splashing and talking loudly. The old woman lies motionless down, listening attentively, her face without any expression. She is breathing calmly at the rhythm of to the words the old man is reading from the book. They weave a web of words and sounds around their two old bodies on the stretchers, their own cocoon. The reading sounds like an undertone, a deep voice from the bottom of the swimming pool, a rhythmical beat from the heart of the hotel. The man turns the pages slowly, the reading progresses at pace and the cocoon grows thicker, enveloping the couple and making it almost invisible. Suddenly, the voice stops its activity; the couple rises up and unwinds the cocoon. The lady walks to the door glass door smiling, almost as if she is dreaming, while the man is following her, apparently pushing her almost protectively by his free hand. I remain alone on the terrace watching the rain coming closer. Then all of a sudden, I see the glass door moving, reflecting the late afternoon sunlight. The couple reappears in the opening and walks back to the stretchers they left. Soon, the man is restarting the reading to his wife already stretched out on her back. Both of them wear a warm jacket now. They look ever more close to each other and to the spoken words. They almost don’t move, but are reclined to each other. The outside world is banned from their life, their being together. Now, the face of the older woman looks flat, unwrinkled and smooth, childish and unmoved. Her face is a mask, a motionless persona, a dead face I have never seen before. It is of a lifeless substance. Her emotions are hidden and gone, her reactions invisible, nonexistent. Her face is a beautiful mask of an absent mind. The spoken words of her husband reading in a low voice are like raindrops already evaporating before falling in the swimming pool.

Traffic Jam

Traffic jam

This is Eden, the lush garden of drivers, cars and motorcycles. We drive along the north coast of Bali, from Lovina where the little shops are and the noisy bars, the restaurants and the hotels, the traffic signs and the billboards, where the traffic seems to originate but doesn’t and absorbs all other traffic nearing from Singaraja, the capital of the north coast, driving further to the West side of Bali, the direction of the island of Java, but not that far, only to the place of Pemutaran as the final or almost final stop of our trip, the turning point if we have not enough time to pass on and to end up further on at the little village, a hamlet opposite Banyuwangi on Java, the little town where the ferry boat and many other ships depart or arrive from Java and wait for their turn to move on to the high sea. What’s up north of the shore but water and sea and deep ocean floor, that doesn’t slope where it levels and starts to climb to another shore I only know from the map of Indonesia on the wall of my elementary school and later from the dirty walls in tourists offices and hotels offering all kind of tours by bus or airplane, big and small ones, safe and dangerous ones, suddenly diving into the deepest ocean, to the deepest floor underwater between the Sunda islands of this large archipelago, taking its black box forever to darkness.

The worker in the rice field

The worker in the rice field

The workers in the rice field are going home after having been planting the seedlings all morning. Two of them remain in the field and are still over there under the blazing sun. I sit on the balcony waiting for the afternoon rain that will come soon. One of the workers moves rather slowly, his legs as round as zero, the form of a circle, but still not a wheel that pushes him forward. It’s an old man; it might even be an old woman. I can hear the two workers talking from far. They make identical gestures of the hands, picking the seedlings, firmly putting them in the thick mud.

A demon in the hotel

I love her at first sight. All of sudden, she is in the open hall for breakfast. Outside is a shaded terrace with a seaside view. This is a prime location for a hotel, a restaurant, an early breakfast, for her. She didn’t enter from the terrace. I’m sure of that. She must have entered from the back, where the gardens and the swimming pools are,the high trees, the holy statues of deities, the spouting fountains, the demons between the plants. She had been in the garden. No, I don’t think she is a demon, a fountain or a statue. The body of the grinning demons under the splashing fountain water are green, not hers’. She is too quick and elegant, too vivid and vital to be a statue. However, she might be a new demon, her big eyes wide open although behind glasses (most demons don’t wear.) Okay, she is not a local demon, speaking fluently and loudly Spanish but no English. Her hair is blond, meticulously dyed and her eyes are of a dangerous brown color. She cannot smile.

Umbrellas and tropical rain

Umbrellas and tropical rain
Today, I had an unexpected program - inadvertently. After breakfast, I walked along the beach of Kuta you already know. I can tell you, this morning I have seen more dogs together in the sea than ever before. A young guy was throwing a tennis ball upon the water and all the dogs from the beach of Kuta at large ran into the sea, to the same ball, to the same place. The man was practicing his forehand or his backhand depending on the place of the viewer.

Bahassa Indonesia or a Sandwich

A sandwich?


It's a pity, I don't speak Bahassa Indonesia. I'm too old or too lazy to learn it.  However, I do my utmost best to communicate  - in English. Yesterday some hours after dinner, I was a bit hungry. No problem, I order  a coffee and a snack. No, Mister, we have no snacks, no sweets. All right. Maybe you can serve us fried banana. I'm sorry, sold out. But, the bakery is around the corner. Sorry, Mister, may not leave here.Then she suggests to have French fries. I reply that we have had dinner and a snack will do. Please, no French fries. Finally, I order some bread and cheese. Ah, you would like to have a sandwich. I think to know how a sandwich looks like. Okay, I give in, let's try. After a while, she brings the coffee.Half an hour later, I ask her for the bread. That takes time, Mister, she says. Returning from the kitchen, at last she brings two big plates with French fries in the middle decorated by four sticks with sliced bread, tomato, cucumber,onion dipped in mayonnaise and hot sauce. A meal for a hungry elephant, a lost lion or a beggar in the street. It might be easier to learn Bahassa Indonesia than to order a sandwich in my hotel.