Teranesia

Prabir suddenly recognised his name amongst the murmuring coming from the butterfly hut – spoken not by Madhusree, who could barely pronounce it, but by his father. He tried to make out the words that followed, but the fruit pigeons wouldn’t shut up. He scanned the ground for something to throw at them, then decided that any attempt to drive them away would probably be a long, noisy process. He rose to his feet and tiptoed around to the back of the hut, to press one ear against the fibreglass.

‘How’s he going to cope when he has to go to a normal school back in India, in a real solid classroom six hours a day, when he’s barely learnt to sit still for five minutes? The sooner he gets used to it, the less of a shock it will be. If we wait until we’re finished here, he could be … what? Eleven, twelve years old? He’ll be uncontrollable!’ Prabir could tell that his father had been speaking for a while. He always began arguments dispassionately, as if he was indifferent to the subject under discussion. It took several minutes for this level of exasperation to creep into his voice.

His mother laughed her who’s-talking laugh. ‘You were eleven the first time you sat in a classroom!’

‘Yes, and that was hard enough. And at least I’d been exposed to other human beings. You think he’s being socialised properly through a satellite link?’

There was such a long silence that Prabir began to wonder if his mother was replying too softly for him to hear. Then she said plaintively, ‘Where, though? Calcutta’s too far away, Rajendra. We’d never see him.’

‘It’s a three-hour flight.’

‘From Jakarta!’

His father responded, quite reasonably, ‘How else should I measure it? If you add in the time it takes to travel from here, anywhere on Earth will sound too far away!’

Prabir felt a disorientating mixture of homesickness and fear. Calcutta. Fifty Ambons’ worth of people and traffic, squeezed into five times as much land. Even if he could grow used to the crowds again, the prospect of being ‘home’ without his parents and Madhusree seemed worse than being abandoned almost anywhere else – as surreal and disturbing as waking up one morning to find that they’d all simply vanished.

‘Well, Jakarta’s out of the question.’ There was no reply; maybe his father was nodding agreement. They’d discussed this before: throughout Indonesia, violence kept flaring up against the ethnic Chinese ‘merchant class’ – and though the Indian minority was tiny and invisible in comparison, his parents seemed to think he’d be at risk of being beaten up every time there was a price rise. Prabir had trouble believing in such bizarre behaviour, but the sight of uniformed, regimented children singing patriotic songs on excursions around Ambon had made him grateful for anything that kept him out of Indonesian schools.

His father adopted a conciliatory tone. ‘What about Darwin?’ Prabir remembered Darwin clearly; they’d spent two months there when Madhusree was born. It was a clean, calm, prosperous city – and since his English was much better than his Indonesian, he’d found it easier to talk to people there than in Ambon. But he still didn’t want to be exiled there.

‘Perhaps.’ There was silence, then suddenly his mother said enthusiastically, ‘What about Toronto? We could send him to live with my cousin!’

‘Now you’re being absurd. That woman is deranged.’

‘Oh, she’s harmless! And I’m not suggesting that we put his education in her hands; we’ll just come to some arrangement for food and board. Then at least he wouldn’t be living in a dormitory full of strangers.’

His father spluttered. ‘He’s never met her!’

‘Amita’s still family. And since she’s the only one of my relatives who’ll speak to me—’

The conversation shifted abruptly to the topic of his mother’s parents. Prabir had heard this all before; after a few minutes he walked away into the forest.

He’d have to find a way to raise the subject and make his feelings plain, without betraying the fact that he’d been eavesdropping. And he’d have to do it quickly; his parents had an almost limitless capacity to convince themselves that they were acting in his best interest, and once they made up their minds he’d be powerless to stop them. It was like an ad hoc religion: The Church of We’re Only Doing It For Your Own Good. They got to write all the sacred commandments themselves, and then protested that they had no choice but to follow them.

‘Traitors,’ he muttered. This was his island; they were only here on his sufferance. If he left, they’d be dead within a week: the creatures would take them. Madhusree might try to protect them, but you could never be sure what side she was on. Prabir pictured the crew of a ferry or supply ship, marching warily into the kampung after a missed rendezvous and days of radio silence, to find no one but Madhusree. Waddling around with a greasy smile on her face, surrounded by unwashed bowls bearing the remnants of meals of fried butterflies, seasoned with a mysterious sweet-smelling meat.