Take Me to Paradise

By Jan Cornall

Marilyn wakes up one morning and instead of catching the bus to work, catches the ‘I don’t like Mondays’ flight to Bali. But is she too late to indulge her paradise dream? How many western women have arrived before her and fallen headlong for the lush green island, its exotic culture, and their attractive driver?
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Set in the artisan hill town of Ubud, Bali, in the aftermath of the bombing that rocked Bali's famed peace and serenity, Jan Cornall’s novel explores notions of paradise and a modern woman’s quest for meaning in an increasingly hostile world.

Travelling the tourist sites with her driver Bagus, after hearing how his life was changed by the bombing, Marilyn has time to reflect on her own life: her marriage break- up, life as a single mother, and the work–life treadmill she has just escaped from.

While her spirit responds to the sensuality of everyday Balinese life, Marilyn becomes aware of a longing for something more: perhaps creative and spiritual fulfillment, perhaps an affair with Bagus. But what of his wife? How can Marilyn even consider entering the same triangular dynamic that ended her marriage, yet how else can she find expression for the deep arousal of mind, body, and soul she is experiencing.

Take Me to Paradise shows how different the paradise dream can be: for a western woman, for a Balinese man, for a Balinese wife, and the many characters Marilyn meets. Cornall reminds us, as the Balinese do, that while the painful events of our lives leave their mark, if we are to go on living, we have no choice but to let them go.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jan Cornall
• Release date: Feb 3, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311206763

Jan Cornall

Jan Cornall is a writer, performance poet and singer based in Sydney Australia. Awarded a number of grants and fellowships, she has written fifteen plays and musicals, a feature film, a published novel, a poem/song collection, short stories and three CDs of songs. With a strong interest in Asia, Jan collaborates regularly with writers, musicians and artists from the region. She has performed her work at a number of literary festivals including Ubud Writers Festival (Bali), Utan Kayu Biennale(Jakarta), Hong Kong International Literary Festival, Northern Kingdoms Poetry Festival (Cambodia), Darwin’s Wordstorm, Irrawaddy Literary Festival (Burma) and Open Arts Festival (Beijing). Jan leads international writers retreats and is currently working on a literary memoir set in Vietnam, which traces the footsteps of the French author Marguerite Duras. Her novel Take Me to Paradise was launched at the Ubud Writers Festival in 2006 and her recent book Archipelagogo - Love Songs to Indonesia, is a delightful collection of poems, songs and stories penned during a decade of travel in Indonesia.

Book preview

TAKE ME TO PARADISE

Jan Cornall

Smashwords edition 2014, copyright 2006 Jan Cornall

Dedicated to all those

dreaming of discovering

their own paradise on earth.

Contents

Start of Take Me to Paradise

About the author

Acknowledgments

Credits

Copyright

1

Through the airport doors, out into the warm air bath, where palm fronds dance in the hot jet fuel breeze, they wait for me:

Nyoman, Made, Ketut, Wayan, Kadek, Dewa, Ida Bagus, Kadek, Nyoman, Agung, Putu, Wayan, Gusti, Ketut, Made, Wayan, Ketut, Nengah, Gede, Agus, Komang, Ketut …

Leaning over barricades, signs dangling from long slim fingers, smiles wide and full of waiting, only I am not the one they are waiting for.

I am not Jane Griggson, not Bill Friend and family, nor The Olaff Group, not Kyoko Ryoshi, not Gunther Rolandson, not the St Marks College Group or the South Coast Retirees Football Team. I have no booking, no safe transfer to a comfortable hotel with blue pools that go on forever, with bikini girls on white banana lounges and pink cocktail umbrellas that never see rain. No hotel boy is picking me up, no driver in ceremonial sarong and headdress to make me feel like Anna in The King and I.

Their smiles are so welcoming and I read the names on their signs as if it could be me, as if I want it to be me, just to see their smile, just to catch a moment of, ‘Is it you? Could it be you? Are you the one I am waiting for?’

But I can’t prolong the pretending and as soon as I shake my head and pass, they return their eager smiles to their waiting pose.

I think it must be obvious that this is my first time, so I try to adopt a confident air and pretend to be looking for someone. A special friend perhaps, with his driver — they must be late. I make some business with my watch and mobile phone, texting my imaginary friend to come and rescue me as soon as possible; looking out into the distance as if doing so will conjure them up.

Past the inner rim of waiting drivers, other handsome brown-skinned men lean or squat, backs against pillars, lazy with the heat, smoking kretek cigarettes, laughing, joking, waiting as if it is their art.

‘Taxi, transport, transport, taxi’ they call as I push my way through the pack.

I find a spot away from the crush, to gather my thoughts and make my plan, then I sit down on my suitcase and like everyone else, I wait.

2

I’d managed to get the last seat on the ‘I Don’t Like Mondays’ morning flight to ‘Schapelle’s Bali’. That’s what the airline check in girl called it as I handed over the ticket I’d bought only moments before at the bookings desk. She said that before Schapelle checking in was much more relaxed. After Schapelle, or as she corrected herself, after the ‘Schapelle Show’, everyone had become an obsessive compulsive; checking, rechecking, cling-wrapping their bags or running off to buy locks and stuffing any gaps in their luggage at the last minute with dirty underwear in a bid to ward off drug smugglers or tamperers.

‘I had no idea how neurotic Australians could become,’ she told me in a delightful country girl drawl that matched her cowgirl-style stewardess outfit.

‘You wanna window seat? You gotta check out the desert on the way across, aaawsome!’

‘Er, yes if possible,’ I answered. ‘I thought I’d be too late …’

‘Yoo never know your luck! I can tell you now, all the Ozzies want aisle seats — weak bladders. They like to be close to the loo, especially on the way back!’

I asked if she thought I’d be better off going to Fiji, Hayman Island or the Cook Islands; because Bali’s such a cliché isn’t it, and now with all the drug business — Schapelle and those other poor kids, terrorism and bird flu …

‘They didn’t read the signs, did they? Bird flu? Eat a clove of garlic everyday. It’ll kill anything. Even keep terrorists away. You got a lock on your suitcase?’ I nodded.

‘Sweeet. You’ll be right. And what’s wrong with clichés? Look at me! I’m a walking cliché! Who cares? I don’t!’

She leaned in across her desk.

‘Let me tell you a secret. It’s the clichés that make us happy in this life, don’t you think? We all want love and happiness, yes? And what a bloody cliché that is! Don’t worry, Bali is the closest to paaradiize I’ve ever gotten, and beleeve me I’ve been to most of the paaradiize islands around here. But you gotta get away from the tooorist strip. Go to Ubood! It’s not so hot up there. You can stay at the Ubood Palace where the royal family live. It’s wiiild! Can you imagine any other royal family renting out rooms to tourists! But that’s the Balinese for you. They are soooooo nice!’

Then she flashed me a knowing smile.

‘You’ll find out.’

She slapped my boarding pass on the counter, gave my suitcase a push and practically shouted,

‘Gate 57 boaarding now! Next plleeze.’

3

Motorbikes and taxis honk past on the road in front, dropping passengers off, picking them up. Police in brown uniforms with grins as charming as the rest of them, whistle the drivers on, only no one seems to take much notice. Beyond the low sprawling buildings I have come from, planes rev up to the hilt and take off screaming into the sky. More planes thud and screech along the melting tarmac, bringing in the afternoon cargo of dollar fat tourists to fill the night spots in place of those now speeding towards a spectacular twilight.

And somewhere in the distance — the tinkling of bells and a whiff of temple incense.

Then through the heat shimmering crowd he steps, his hand outstretched.

‘Good afternoon, I’m so sorry you have been waiting. Welcome to Bali!’

He takes my hand, his touch so gentle. Handsome of course, but not searingly so like the young men around me. Balding slightly, a little shorter than me. Late thirties, early forties, could be fifty. How would you know? He smiles his boyish smile and looks me straight in the eye.

‘Let me guess where you are you going. Nusa Dua? Legian? Seminyak? Sanur?’

‘I’m hoping to go to Ubud,’ I reply. ‘A friend was meant to pick me up but …’ I let my lie trail off into the heat.

‘I’ve heard it’s cooler there and not so many tourists,’ I continue. A smile takes over his whole face, ear to ear and chin to forehead.

‘Uboood!’ he grins, ‘That’s my town! I am born there. You have goood taste! Are you an artist? You look artistic. You must be! Oh, I can show you such beautiful places, many beautiful painting, carving, weaving, jewellery … do you like silver jewellery?’

‘Yes I don’t mind it …’ I say. ‘Do you know the Ubud Palace? A friend recommended I stay there …’

‘Ya, ya, of course, I know it!’ he says.

Then I remember, perhaps I am supposed to bargain for a price before agreeing to go with a driver.

‘And how much will it be … to drive there? I’m sorry, I don’t know your name …’

‘Up to you, up to you, no worries, I am Ida Bagus … You can call me Bagus. It means good!’ He laughs.

‘I am very good … at everything!’ We both laugh

‘And you?’

‘Marilyn,’ I mumble softly, as I know what’s coming.

‘Marilyn! Like Marilyn Monroe!’

‘Well yes, but not the young Marilyn, perhaps the older one.’ I give my stock reply. We laugh again.

‘But you are more beautiful.’ He flashes his smile at me. I smile back, and whether I believe him or not, accept the compliment graciously. He picks up my bag and like a gentleman gestures ahead.

‘Shall we go then?’

Why am I not suspicious, not on my guard, why am I just taking the first offer, not comparing prices, not checking my guide book, being more discerning? Why? His voice, so generous and slow, his soft hands, his big-smile kindness, his eyes that already see me.

He’s just a driver for god’s sake, who is going to take me to a hotel! And logically I justify; if he does rip me off, rob me blind or leave me in a ditch, at least I can say it couldn’t have happened with a nicer person.

4

We drive out of the airport car park into a human sea. Waves of motorbikes surround us, riding us, surfing our wake, holding back, letting us through, then seizing the gap and darting ahead. They are the small quick fish. We are the big cod, the whales and sharks. Together we ride in one big wave towards green then red traffic lights. We slow together, take off together, overtake and fall back again, racing each other home.

Bagus’s small, black four-wheel drive with tinted windows is somewhere between a cod and a shark. Its seats are covered in a scaly bumpy fabric. It’s cold from the air conditioning just like the inside of a fish must be and a good luck charm dangles from the visor like a bright lure already swallowed.

Warehouses line the busy main road. Vacant land, mangrove swamps and stagnant waterways choked with plastic bags and bottles stretch away to the left and right. It’s not the scenic tour, I ponder, rather the Balinese version of industrial suburbia that surrounds most major airports, only here there are people everywhere: working, walking, squatting in the shade, selling food at roadside stalls and riding, riding.

I stare out like a voyeur into the sea of vehicles beside us, fascinated by how much one person can carry on a single motorbike.

A farmer has what looks to be his whole rice harvest piled high on the back of his Yamaha. Builders carry long poles of timber and bamboo. Surfers carry surfboards, the pillion passenger holding them straight along each side, making their bike look like a Goggomobil. Office girls coming home from work drive daintily, students in uniform, three to a bike, driving home from school. Grandma in her lace blouse and ceremonial sarong, gracefully riding side-saddle, being ferried to the temple I presume. How calmly and serenely they ride. How beautiful these people are. Isn’t anyone here ugly?

Through a wide junction with a huge statue of a warrior fighting off a serpent, along another busy road and further on, we are waved to a stop by men in black and white check sarongs, brandishing red traffic wands.

Bagus announces, ‘Look, a ceremony procession, just for you. Do you want to take photo?’ I nod and search for my camera. He pulls over and waits while I get out. I hate being such an obvious tourist but how can I pretend to be anything else?

Long lines of women, men and children in colourful ceremonial dress cross the road. The women, straight-backed and elegant, carry tall offering baskets of beautifully arranged fruit on their heads. They are accompanied by an orchestra of men and boys carrying gongs and cymbals beating out a fast emphatic rhythm. It takes quite a while for them to cross, the traffic is at a standstill but no one seems to mind. Then they disappear through ornate temple gates and are gone.

I get back in the car, breathless from my first real cultural experience. Bagus drives on, leaving the ceremony behind and I ask him,

‘Is it a special day? Does this happen very often?’

Bagus laughs.

‘Every day is special day in Bali! Always ceremony going on like this.’

‘But what about people at work,’ I ask. ‘Surely they don’t go?’

‘Oh yes, everybody goes. They must go. This is Bali! Everybody does ceremony all the time! Next week we have biiiig ceremony, Galungan. Now everybody is preparing for it. And you? You do ceremony?’ he asks.

‘Mm, not really.’ I answer. ‘We have Christmas, and birthdays I suppose. When we are born and when we die. Oh, and when we get married. But not as colourful as that, much more sombre and boring.’

Bagus wants to know more.

‘Why are you travelling alone? Where is your husband? Where are your children?’

I gaze back into the scenery.