The Sam Zanzibar series was first serialised and printed in The Beat magazine in 2001. We thought it was time to check in with Mr Zanzibar again.
There was a knock at the door, so I switched off the TV and feigned sleep, or absence or death. The question of whether or not I should close my eyes disturbed me however, and then another knock at the door destroyed my concentration. I got up and went out into the courtyard, but the sudden movement brought lights to my eyes and made my stomach turn. I leaned against the wall by the door.
The sound of feet scuffing came to me from the path on the other side of the wall. I listened, then scuffed my own feet. The scuffing outside stopped. An ant appeared on the wall a short distance from my nose and seemed to regard me warily. I called out: ‘Hello?’
The ant disappeared. From behind the door came the reply: ‘Hello?’
I rolled my eyes and opened the door.
A tall young man in black jeans and a tight black T stood before me, smiling amiably. ‘Hello,’ he said, ‘I am looking for a house.’
My heart leapt. Was I going to be asked to move out already? I had been told I could stay here for three months, and so far it had been only one and a half. It was the nicest place I had ever lived in – cool and roomy, a bungalow with few walls and twisting, tree-lined paths leading up to it. Leaves fell from trees outside and collected in a corner of the kitchen. The paddy out back glowed orange and red with the setting of the sun. I could see it from the little balcony upstairs, but I could also tell it was happening from downstairs, because the walls, floor and TV glowed as well. The atmosphere thus created affected me strangely – I felt like an astronaut on a mission to Mars, or a prince of nomads waiting by an oasis to receive a payment of jewels and fine cloth in return for mirth brought down from the mountains. . . But the place wasn’t mine, nothing had been signed and I wasn’t paying to stay in it.
‘May I look at this house, please? I will be just one minute.’
The man’s accent and phrasing, perhaps peculiar to somewhere in Central Europe or South America, took my mind off the problem of imminent expulsion. There was a phone attached to his studded black belt: a Nokia 3310 in dark grey casing. A businessman, I supposed. Someone who could pay the rent. I had a phone too – but I never had enough money to buy credit for it and was always just about to sell it. I let Mr Business in.
‘Just one minute. . .’
I nodded, said ‘Don’t bother, it’s okay’ when he bent as though to take off his boots before stepping up onto the floor of the living area, and went looking for my own phone. While the man in black did his tour of inspection – the kitchen and the fridge (contents: a bag of sugar, an egg, half a tomato, a bottle of chilli sauce, a teddy bear, a block of surfboard wax), the bathroom, the bedroom upstairs – I stood in the middle of the living area downstairs and scrolled through the numbers in my phone, an activity I usually found productive in varying ways: Abstrac (why no ‘t’? I couldn’t remember), Agung, Andrew, Anjali, Arie Office, Bedug, Bejo, Benny, Bobby R., Bzzz. . . No ideas came to me this time, and soon the man was inspecting the staircase, the courtyard, the clouds in the sky (should I point out that they weren’t included?). I looked at the clouds in the sky as well, and the man turned to me and extended his hand.
‘Friends!’ he announced to my surprise. Till then I had assumed he was a stranger, but now it appeared he was asking me to make up with him. I shook his hand and took a closer look at his face: square jaw, thin lips, straight nose, clear blue eyes. A well-formed face, perhaps a little boring, but with an intelligent and friendly expression – but definitely a stranger’s. . . How did he know me and why did he want to make up with me? Had there been a dispute over a girl? A place in the queue to Double Six? Nothing came to mind.
‘Where are you staying now?’ I asked to cover up my confusion.
‘Taman Griya, but it is not very nice. A crowded housing estate, you know. . .’
I knew, and shuddered at the thought that I myself might have to start looking for somewhere to live in a crowded housing estate. Never mind, the man began to tell me about the much more expensive houses he had looked at in the neighbourhood and what he said interested me, since I felt I now knew what it was to live quite well and was curious about what it would be to live even better, say in a place with even fewer walls, maybe with a stream running through it and an internet connection as well.
But then Mr Business began to tell me about his business, and the gecko dung at the base of a wall caught my attention. It collected so quickly here! Didn’t those geckos understand? Stupid geckos. But apparently if you mixed gecko dung with water it formed a paste you could apply to your skin in order to ward off mosquitos. Or was it to ward off geckos? How much gecko dung would it take? Maybe it was time for me to start raising geckos. I could sell their excrement. To ferals. To everybody! Everybody was into natural products these days. I could do quite well selling gecko dung mosquito repellent. Become Mr Business, the man himself. Start paying the rent and actually ringing up people with my phone. Even upgrade to a stylin’ little Siemens.
Or might it not work? Was it in fact a complete lie, something Fuddly had made up and told me when we were drinking one night? The dick! But imagine a huge gecko dung – a giant, mountainous gecko blob! How big would the gecko that did such a thing be? Maybe there were such enormous geckos up in the mountains somewhere. Imagine one coming down from the mountains to sun itself on Blue Ocean Beach. In shades. Trundling down to the water’s edge to keep goal or standing in line at the bakso cart. Talking on its Nokia 3310. . .
‘I will give you my card,’ the man was saying, ‘so then if you need to set up anything in your office you can call me.’ He took a little cardholder out of his back pocket and fished around in it. It appeared he had finished and was about to go. I moved towards the door, and he followed.
‘Thank you very much,’ he said as he gave me his card. ‘What did you say your name was?’
‘Sam.’
The man nodded and held out his hand again. ‘Friends!’ There he went again! We shook hands and smiled pleasantly at each other, and I closed the door behind him. Who was he? What was it he had done to me, or I to him? Should I have patted him on the back and assured him I held no grudge against him? Should I have punched him in the nose? Who knew. . . I returned to the couch and turned the TV back on. But my thoughts returned to our encounter. The man’s card was still in my hand. I had been absently folding it and rolling it up. I turned it over and looked at it:
Franz Lenehan – Director, Studio Communications Networking
Not a name familiar to me, nor a field. I crumpled the card up in my fist and looked up at the ceiling to see where the geckos were hiding. Maybe they had the answer. . .
Part Two next week ________________________
