Her eyes saw nothing unusual. That would have been remarkable because it was pitch black. Still, she looked for clues. Her ear searched the room for the familiar night sounds. Nothing. No cicak, the small house lizard, against the ceiling this time. No tokèh, the large night lizard, who calls seven times in the evening. She shifted her attention outside. Not a single sound came from there either. No frog, no cricket. She was comfortable in this bed. Her eyes stared up into the darkness at the invisible wickerwork of the roof. Nothing rustled or stirred there either. She calmly sat up and stuck her thin legs out of the bed. Her feet found no slippers. Ajoh, where had she left them again? Not important. She sat there for a moment, her ear still searching through the silence. Her eyes found no clues, just like her ears. Not the smallest ray of light entered the room, so there must be thick clouds covering the moon, she concluded, but there was no sound of rain. No tropical rain shower, nor the soft tapping of drops falling from the trees. When she had sat up long enough, she dared to stand up carefully. Without slippers then. The floor under her feet felt like woven bamboo. It moved a little. The movements in the floor may have had something to do with her balance. That wasn't too good anymore, she fell over easily. And the floor wasn't too stable either, she stuck to herself. Carefully, yes. To her surprise, she found the doorknob without any problems. That was a stroke of luck in this darkness. Why hadn't she left a light on, as she usually did in a strange environment? Sudah, all right, this environment was not unknown to her after all. Nothing special at the top of the stairs either. With her foot she reached for the first step she had to go down. 'Trap, trap, stairs, stairs,' she heard Tirto say, warning her for the stairs, followed by 'Hati, hati.' Another warning, meaning 'be careful'. She chuckled. She mentally grabbed his outstretched hand. He was such a thoughtful boy who came to her rescue at every fort they visited, every hill they climbed, every step on which she might slip. But here no one was ready to guide her descent. Luckily there was a banister, so she had to make do with that. Directly at the bottom of the stairs was the kamar kecil, the toilet, which to her relief had a toilet. Crouching down was no longer easy for her. When she had finished, she looked next to the toilet bowl for the gajong, the shovel tin, to rinse away her night pee with the water from the bucket. Aduh, ah, you fool. No need, a cistern here. Convenient, right. On the way back upstairs, her eyes saw very vaguely the outline of the painting above the stairs, depicting a lovely Indian landscape, with a few bamboo houses and a fisherman standing up to his calves in the kali, the river. She felt her way to her bed. A nice soft bed, she thought again as she stretched out once more. She closed her eyes with satisfaction. Before she could marvel at the absence of night sounds once again, she slipped into a deep sleep.
When she woke up for the second time that night, it was dusk. She sat up in surprise. Too fast, she realized. The room began to spin before her eyes. She covered her face with both hands. It was still unusually quiet. How could that be? She had missed the muezzin's call for the first prayer. Normally it sounded loud enough through the speakers from the minaretto to wake her up. Not now. She heard no roosters. No dogs. The bed was no longer comfortable. Without thinking, she stepped out and felt the floor slippery and cold under her feet. Where had those slippers gone? Annoyed, she opened the bedroom door and headed for the stairs. 'Mind your step,' she heard the cool mechanical Schiphol voice, just in time before she took a step into the void. Startled, she stopped and clung to the banister. She noticed the painting on the wall. Not a lovely Indian landscape, but a sober still life, which she had painted by numbers herself. The disappointment made her legs weak and she took a trembling step back. 'Pergi ke kerkhof,' Tirto said in her head, 'Walk to the cemetery.' Well, that was only a hair's breadth away. Of course he didn't mean that literally. It was an expression, a way of saying that a person could 'walk to the moon and back.' Whenever someone of the traveling group was whining for Bir Bintang, beer, - alcohol was difficult to come by - Tirto had responded with the expression. They all were cheerful, it was their joke. She didn't want to spoil that. Although he had explained what he meant, the words affected her every time. But she kept it to herself, she had not come to the Moluccas to explain things. She had come to 'sponge' as she called it: to absorb all impressions, to renew all memories, to warm them up, make them supple, to water them and keep them alive. Memories of Manoes, that is. And she wanted to get rid of something. How long had he been lying in the cemetery, her Manoes? Ten months, ten years? Aduh, time was so unimportant. What she felt in her bones was what mattered. When the memories became stiff from the cold, then it was time to return to the land of Manoes. Here she felt close to him again. Here she had come to know him as a young man, admiring his white teeth while laughing, his smooth, dark skin, his slightly crooked legs, strong, muscular. This was the land where her Manoes flourished and bustled with life energy. Where he played guitar and sang in bands. Where all the girls hung on his arm. He had left this country for her. So great was his love for her that he thought it would last anywhere in the world. However, his joy had begun to wane from the moment he set foot on Dutch soil. His skin turned gray under the thick layers of clothing, the sparkle disappeared from his gaze. She had to admit it herself: he seemed so out of place in that new environment. He didn't belong there. He didn't fit there. It scraped and grazed on all sides. He didn't feel happy, she saw it even though he never said it. At most he mumbled 'not enough light here,' and that was exactly it. He withered, her Manoes. And one day he was dead. Her beautiful tropical palm tree could not have settled in a foreign soil. Now his bones lay in the the inhospitable earth that had never wanted to be a warm coat for him. And in his place she had come to long for his island. She went there every time she felt his stiffness in her bones. Why had they never gone together when they still could? She had been afraid of losing him to his own country. He'd had the same fear: that he would never get over his home sickness. Both had struggled with the knowledge that 'home' was in a different place for each of them. She was the oldest traveler in the group. Of course she didn't say anything about Manoes. After all, she hadn't come to explain things. But people have their own way of filling in the gaps. Her traveling companions treated her like a sweet old lady, extended helpful hands to her, lifted her suitcase onto the bus and admired the photos she showed of her paintings by numbers. But she saw through them. They weren't really concerned about her, they were just happy that they themselves were still in their 'prime time'. They needed her to feel youthful and energetic. She was their frame of reference. If they could only know. Aduh, Manoes. Was her love for him as great as his love for her? 'Yes! Yes,' she exclaimed, but her exclamation drowned out the denial. All those years she had convinced herself of a non-existent love, an artificial affection. And it worked, she had been able to keep up appearances. Until Manoes found her secret gem. One bad day he stood in front of her with the ring in his hands. 'How did you get this?' 'Aduh, from you,' she had muttered stoically, her face carefully folded. 'You still remember, right?' The lie was a sin upon a sin. She had had a choice, then, long ago. She couldn't bear it, all those girls claimed him and she had thrown herself into the arms of another boy. Out of revenge. But she fell in love, and so did the boy. He gave her the ring because he wanted her to be his forever, but he couldn't go to the Netherlands. Manoes did. She had made a cowardly choice. She chose Manoes, not out of love but out of calculation. She had put the ring far away, just as the memory. She had even forgotten the boys name, she told herself. 'Then why don't you wear it?' asked Manoes. 'I was afraid I was going to lose it.' She felt the blood drain from her face as he slipped the ring onto her finger. 'If you don't wear it you will lose it.' Caring Manoes. And she, she could hardly bear it on her hand, this proof of her faithlessness in full view of her husband, day in and day out. Now she wanted to get rid of that devilish ring. She wanted to keep the memory of Manoes pure. She only wanted to mourn for him. She wanted to be the sweet old lady who came to Ambon to commemorate her husband. But there was nothing pure about her mourning as long as she had the ring in her possession. It wasn't easy losing the thing. She let it slip secretly from her hand as she climbed onto the back of a moped that would take her inland. Accelerate and drive away, she gestured to the moped rider, but a little nasty boy - of which there were hundreds in every village - shouted at her: Ibu, ibu, madam, madam, you are losing something. With a satisfied face he handed her the ring, she grimaced in thanks. On another attempt, she watched in horror as a snorkeler brought the ring, which she had slipped off her finger into the sea, to the surface. After all, she had hidden the damn thing among the fish bones and manga peels that went back to the kitchen after dinner. Her memory of Paiman became more and more vivid. Oh sure, she actually remembered his name. His portrait moved in front of the image of Manoes. She shook her shoulders to get rid of it, but it was as persistent as the ring. Manoes! She lost Manoes here on Ambon, even though she had come here to remember him. 'Trap, trap,' Tirto repeated in her head. 'Mind your step,' the voice at Schiphol said every few seconds and she realized that she was no longer in the Moluccas. She stood at the top of her own stairs and looked down on the bloodless painting of a still life on the wall. For a moment, the impressions of the past few weeks had played tricks on her. Misled her into thinking she was still there, but at dawn Manoes was further away than ever. Paiman forced himself on her, the ring burned her finger. When saying goodbye at Pattimura Airport, Tirto had pushed it into her hands. 'Here you are, tante, aunty. I only kept it for so long because you kept losing it.' She didn't want this anymore.
Mind your step. Trap, trap. She ignored Tirto's warning when she thrust her foot too far forward and into the emptiness. Too bad Tirto, dear boy, she said to herself, saya pergi ke kerkhof, I'm going to the cemetery. But her fall was broken by the thick winter coats hanging on hooks at the bottom bend of the stairs. 'Damn it,' she cursed at the vision of a hundred more paintings by numbers.