[YD6-63(TRT) Chapter Code] Nyx’s Whispers and Aetheria’s Pull: the Veil of Silk and Silent Longing in Bali
BOOK SYNOPSIS
This story is an unfolding suite of chapters clarifying my book, The Code: Horizon of Infinity—a philosophical memoir exploring how the universe sculpted our minds. Through Aetheria, the lens of consciousness, aware of her need for a body to reveal herself and exercise her wishes, the narrative leads to her birth and the name she will claim: Sunshine — Step into this journey of becoming, where the cosmos whispers its secrets, and identity blooms like dawn.
Chapter Immersive Synopsis
The airbus lands—only Nyx’s hush and the pull of unseen hands. Bali breathes in shadows, Aetheria weaves my path through flickering lamps and whispers in moonlit courtyards. At the Japanese restaurant, silk-wrapped hostesses flutter, and Iluh sings—a note suspended, a longing unanswered. Between us, the night lingers, heavy with words unsaid. Beyond the lantern glow, fate stirs in the quiet, waiting to unfold.
[YD6-63(TRT) Chapter Code] Nyx’s Whispers and Aetheria’s Pull: the Veil of Silk and Silent Longing in Bali
After the airbus’ silver wings slice the night sky, to begin descent toward sprawling city lights, the intercom announces. “This is your captain. We’re about to land at Sopanjan airport.” I feel lighten, floating in my seat — until, gliding to touchdown. Air brakes shudder through the cabin, and release the draft to taxiing toward distant swallowing industrial lights — arising warehouse shadows, scattering blue Garuda tail fins-- mythic sentinels edging the airfield. Fascinated by the “eagle” emblem of flight and legend, watching as in a trail of passengers. I'm descending, floodlights drench the hip-roofed terminal to daylighting the asphalt apron to the edge of the terminal’s glazed facade.
I'm behind an ant-trail of tufted heads — proud tourists, backpackers mingled among travelers step in our faint shadows — I advance, passing security guards stationed in a ring before parked official cars. My laptop briefcase tugs at my grip, the Samsonite case with topographic equipment swinging from shoulder straps. I watch as the lead dissolves beneath the shaded eaves of the rural-roofed terminal. I'm trailing toward the gaping hollow, past the silent sentinel of the plate-glass doors held open. Taken aback, crossing the threshold to a gleaming white marble floor, awash under the steady tide of spreading advancing crowds. Sjef, the Dutchman who sent me off from the Jakarta head-office, echoes an assurance in my mind — “Somebody will be waiting for you. . .”
I scan the fascia, nearing and slipping underneath: “International — Internal Arrivals.” I'm avoiding the watching gaze of a uniformed guard. Reach the far end of the wall, as an exit spills into a gathering shrouded by a shield of men, placards raised in the quiet of staring eyes.
‘None bear my name,’ A silent sigh escapes me, as if Philips TRT’s famed efficiency has surrendered to Nyx, lost in the whims of darkness. Nyx’s breath sweeps the concourse, unseen. The breeze curls around me, rhyme last Friday’s arrival in Jakarta. I step forward, emerging beneath the redwood rafters of a lean-to tropical wide eave shelters the sidewalk. To find the driveway bare, egressing the airport into the waiting darkness.
Paraffin lamps flicker in the far dark corner, men squat in their dim light, murmurs in low tones — waiting, for customers, for fate deep into the night. I linger, grasping their quiet moment, non-rising to approach.
I turn back, patience wearing thin, the memories of my arrivals in Jakarta still fresh — weariness met a world with little patience. My gaze drifts through interstices in the crowd, landing on the attendant at the “info” carousel.
Approaching, I’m ready to spill — ‘I’m here! An agent of Astana Santi Willy hotel should be waiting for me!’ to my dismay, I am left once more to Nyx mischief. The question lingers, assimilating the phones as a strange tool with the local culture, I step away. One last pass by the placards — still, no name.
In Helios’ golden flock of fluttering wings, Aetheria nestled for the night, from weaving her tapestry — my path threading through a destined internship in telecommunications -- at the info kiosk, I handed over a two-line scribbled slip of paper — the Dutchman’s parting note for my journey. “Astana Santi Willy hotel,” which the Info attendant scan onto, dialing the phone number.
As the handset passes across the desk, my knuckles brush my cheek. I begin, “I’m at the airport…” An elderly woman’s voice cuts in, stifling my words, her voice edging with a panic urgency. “A young man with a light blue shirt is coming.”
I track my steps back to the shady driveway. Before impatience can churn into deceiving thoughts, up the driveway a slight teenage figure emerges from the shadows, approaches alongside the flicker of figures by the paraffin-burning lights. His shirt catches the glow beneath the lean-to roof, lightening into a blue tint. He spots me, his gaze steady, carrying a quiet maturity, that belies his youth.
Without a word, he pivots. My mind stitches together the signal — our steps align at the bullnose of the curb as he lifts a hand, waving down a taxi. Through the headlight glare, of his earlier emerging shadow, a branded Toyota emerges, radiator muzzle breaching the lights pulling up.
As we slide into the interior - smack, smack - the doors shut. The blue-shirted man leans between the front backrests, exchanging brief words with the driver. The airport terminal shelter eases away from a quiet, coasting pull-off, slipping into the circumferential hush of spilling lights. The Nyx lingers in the distance, undisturbed, her shadows nestling in the hollow cracks of crafted architectures dissolving into a swamp of street lit houses.
Streetlamps dance their spill, light traffic silhouettes dissolve into the gloom. Cycles and motorbikes restless weave — I'm expecting a main street’s detachment, a thoroughfare slipping ahead. But instead, the roadway contracts — an artery touring off-road, narrowing into veins. Headlights glow through the squeezed passage, brushing low roofed fenestrated modest home facades.
Fractured in the cluttered rows, light cracks through shutters, with door seam pair storefronts squeezing out to sculpt to the undersides of squat awnings. We rock and bump forward, headlights beaming down an alley, flickering over a Chinese-style horse-drawn wagon bouncing two passengers — until shadows slither up the whitewashed ‘Great Chinese Wall.’ Trailing left, disappearing into the darkness. The junction leaves behind, my mind in silent bewilderment, halt by the cranked Chinese roof, as a glow falls away, surrendering to the spill of streetlights, etching carved wooden gates into existence.
We step out of the car. The blue-shirted man lingers at the driver's window before circling the taxi trunk. With the ease of an owner’s son, he slips through one of the gate’s door leafs, into a Chinese pavilion rises. Stepping onto the entryway open-air reception, outlined by a redwood column. Beyond, scattered lanterns slip welcomes embracing arms, unveil the hush of a Chinese garden.
Ghostly, afar the redwood Chinese classic bungalow emerge from the far porch of nestling shadows, a man to figures by the twisted trunk of a maple tree. Upfront, his woman pauses, along the reflective blue glaze settles in the watchful eye of the pool at the heart of the garden. Gazing into the vaulted spread of branches, their flocculent leafy palms a canopy aglow against the hollow dark. In quiet rapport with the blue-shirted man — parents — moonlit figures suspended from interference.
The young man veers toward the vacant redwood reception. Slipping behind the counter, he leans and pulls open a drawer in the shadows. A sheet of paper flutters down onto the bar-ledge, as he fumbles for a pen. As he braces a heel of his hand, his eyes a zephyr — not quite reaching my face — offering a silent request, my pleasure to register with my passport. While the Old-woman slipped by, in deed paying the taxi driver and sending the driver on his way to vanish in the night.
The young man, stepping onto hexagon slabs of converging paths, leads me across the entrance pavilion, ascend the redwood flight of stairs, My gaze heading a curiosity sweep to little halos shy. Soft lanterns glow behind the loggia’s frame of posts and beams, knee braces bridging redwood fenestrated rooms.
Upstairs, veering into the right wing, we skip past a large window, at the middle window out of a trio the slight blue-shirted man pauses. With a rise of both palms, the door yields — cracking at the jamb as slender leaves double-folding, hinging back in unison, packing as the slight figure swerve edging to pause at the far margin.
A warmth exudes from the harmonious neatness -- leaping like a dog at the joys of return — beckoning as the hush of the interior welcomes me. I step in past the slight man, crossing into the quiet poise of the room. At the foot of the double bed, I drop a thought — ‘Isn’t this a great…’ — but trail off, swirling mid-sentence as the slight figure vanishes. I place my laptop bag atop the vanity cabinet. The mirror tilted, catching the reflection of the pitched, redwood beamed ceiling, as I’m posing, the Samsonite, packed with topographic equipment, on the padded chair. A glance at the suitcase rack — a silent placeholder — waiting for my luggage I left behind in Paris.
I gravitated toward the jamb-framed moonlit loggia, with cane furnishing, to resting my hands on the redwood handrail, allowing my landing to settle. Below, the Old-people vanish into the bamboo tuft, slipping into the shadows beneath the eave-whisk of the fenestrated cottage, only to reappear, a spectral glimpse retreating home through the distant shadows of the covered porch.
I turn away, my body craving a steaming shower, then refreshed, I lift the dark screen of my NEC UltraLite clamshell, a liquid crystal “Tuesday, October 2, 1990,” to the page, immerse myself in typing my notes, paragraphs unfolding down the page. My mind relaunch my trailing experience before the past mushes my perceptions. I press down the screen, turn away from the mirror, step across and duck, shifting with the air’s gentle wave between the crisp, cool sheets, edging the double bed.
As dawn peeks light through, and Morpheus releases his embracing arms, I think through my day, to retrieve at waiting to meet my contact. Chirps outside, breaching a village peace, a motor breaking in the distant. Until Helios’ brightness filter through the window awakens a waste restless crescendo. I kick back the covers, face the bathroom mirror, brushing my teeth, with my Philishave’s whirs pass across my jaw, the top of my lips, short of my sideburns. I slip into jeans, a tank top.
Step in moccasins, lingering a gaze on the brass gleam of an acute seam up the door — I trace my memory bank — changing a joiner’s craftsman. Bringing glossy wood lace a speculative house’s plain white cold walls, warning Jean and I, returning from our honeymoon, to move into kelvin suburb. The piano-hinge fold the door - clap - the slender door’s halved-leaves tuck into a stance against the wall. The jamb yawns open to the loggia. Beyond, revealing Aetheria's mirage shimmering the leafy, nestling canopy, where Nyx has dissolved the hollow darkness, leaving only shadows to drift across the Chinese garden.
I step veer and pass the cane furniture, to the leading redwood handrail, hooks a sharp turn down the flight of treads. My hand gliding, I descend, through the balusters overseeing the girl at the open-air reception counter. I slip from beneath a greeting smile, walking on through the entry-pavilion. Pressing the wooden gate — last night’s blatant darkness dissolved into the perspective of losing myself along the dirt street.
I recall last night’s junction of my arrival from the airport — but continue inland, turning left with the China Wall into a row of houses risen from the swamps of darkness. Then doubled humble and shaky where the wall relents to pursue the concrete trench drain. My gaze drops beneath my feet a curiosity — scattered, delicate yet discarded, betel leaf, banana leaf, lime, gambier, prestige, tobacco betel nuts.
I’m unmoored from the locals -- Aetheria stirs, the warming air whispers, ‘Look at that woman ?’ — Like African women of my childhood in jungle villages of the Belgian Congo, preparing food, washing in the aftermath, their enamel bowl at hand — ‘What is she doing?’ the novelty churns in my mind, unveiling squat on the concrete slabs covering the trench drain bridging an apron to a hamlet’s quiet landscape door — raised awning shelters a storefront counter -- open for business. I pass the pious woman over a canang sari offerings, blurring the lines between religious ritual and the humble task of keeping a meager store.
At the end of the dirt street, the trench vanishes beneath the transversal asphalt artery, sunlight-bleached, instinctive I turn left inbound. A distance into the stretch, unfold retailers squat raising bright-colored sings and facade with brand names. Soon trailing as the air hums with the distant and near purrs of cars and puttering motorbikes, business and commercial facades emerge their portals.
Just ahead, two women form a living tapestry, chatting as they squat in the street, shaded beneath frayed wide-brimmed straw hats, beside open one-gallon paint tins. With slender two-inch brushes, they lay black and white strokes over the concrete curbs, punctuating the edges of roadways. I pass behind them, let the curb bend into a side street, imagining their endless task painting their way through town.
I stroll on, wasting time, letting the oddity of an isolated commercial house reveal itself — a bank, or perhaps insurance, animated offices behind smoked curtain walls, exude an air of detachment. Reflecting an apron-front, mirroring the absurd raw, shapeless frozen mid-motion fountain ruin in the far corner. Yet, embraced by a life animation of three slight men, their feet in the excavation, hands climbing the brick foundation, along an edging planter, as the artists dress the statue with white pebbles.
The murmur of noon drifts back, carrying distant slivers of glistening sea glimpse through cracks and interstices as open-terrace restaurants stir, their solitude-seekers emerging. I sniffle my way back, leaving nightclubs bright yet awkward, dead in their slumbering shades. Bali drifts around me in a quiet grid of streets, guiding my steps toward the Chinese pavilion, entering where the attendant’s open-air reception desk awaits. The young woman, her pale olive complexion warm against the garden filtering bright sunlight, she greets, extending at hands a message.
I asked if she would call. As I wait, she dials and hands me the receiver — TRT Philips’ home office in Jakarta, “Paris is concerned!” A voice taunts through the receiver. “Did you meet your contact?”
“No?” I reply, feeling the weight of a task upon my shoulders — ‘locate a faceless spy?’
On the other end, the man seems to grasp I’m stranded here — until, my mentor steps out of the bush and greets me — ‘I'm Michel!’
As my strolls lag into the afternoon, tracing my steps around the ‘Chinese Wall’ to the village row of houses in the block with Helios hovering on the horizon, Aetheria lays her mirage over a gritty, deserted parking apron. A lackadaisical figure — rocking shoulders and hips — crosses in his shadow, toward the blatant facade, then vanishes through the crack of a blind door, snapping my curiosity awake.
Aetheria’s teasing pull guides my hand to the door lever. With quiet anticipation, I step inside — a spacious Japanese dining hall spreads before me, echoing the remnants of an airport promotion. Kimonos flit like whispers of silk, as young women, a lure woven into the dim ambiance. Wary but amused — ‘I can play along — keep my head.’
The gleaming wooden bar counter off to the right pulls me. Cutting at an angle through the table grid. Until afar, a lone figure slouching over a glass. I cut short the man drowning in his misery, and shift away from the open end, to the nearby two girls kimono-clad nestled in the dead-end, and wiggle myself slipping onto a middle stool.
One of the girls detaches from her idle chatter, approaching to face me, her eyes fasten on the story she left behind, meeting my hesitation, measuring me like a lost guest.
I stumble from — ‘A drink to earn my place?’ — to earn my seat at the bar. The kimono barmaid eyes linger as I hesitate over my usual glass of red wine. I'm counting the sips, stretching a single drink idling myself away.
The barmaid relieves me of my indecisiveness, offering a fresh fruit cocktail instead. I accept. She turns toward the crystals shelved on red wood. Her nimble hands return with an orangey hue filled glass. Return to her chit-chat double, whispers giggles, while I sip, wondering — ‘Did she lip in a touch of alcohol?’ The thought flip — ‘Women are incredible; they always seem to have a solution.’
With my next drink — the following afternoon, “A glass of red wine?” the young kimono girls fray their conversation. As I sip, Ilhu’s name flutters wings through a warm adorn Japanese aviary, weaving into the grand decor — a dining hall with an atypical central checkerboard of tables, backrest huddling vacant chairs, the scarce customers. As the door yawns open, the last embers of Helios’ descent flare, beckon a trickle of silhouettes drifting in, settling into the hushed stillness of the dining hall over my shoulder.
By the ebb and flow of a mere few breaching figures, until light grazing the apparition, coiling through a tuft of amber-blonde hair, to a petite, elegant woman — late twenties — in a Japanese seated posture. Behind one of the polished chabudai, punctuating the skirting wall.
My drink finished, I spin off my stool, away from the kimono girls, crossing the hall toward the amber-blonde woman lost in her thoughts. My gaze brushes her as I press the door open, stepping into the night’s streetlights. In my strides, she fades from my mind. I circle the block, drifting back toward my hotel room.
The echo of voices yonder, muffled by my door, beckons — Aetheria pulls the thread. I step out into the hollow hush of mid-morning, where the village lingers between sleep and waking. The loggia frames the sky, teasing me with high, wispy forbearance, knowing my weakness for the silk sheen of blond-white strands — floating tufts of hairs, strewn by ghostly fingers.
Perched before the handrailing, I drop my gaze, tracing the stir of foliage — a woven canopy, alive with the chatter of birds. At the loggia’s end angle, my eyesight leaps — over the compound’s stone wall, across the crack of an alleyway — frog-leaping the top of an ash-block wall. Vaults onto the tiled ridge split the rooftops’ hips — a voluminous tide of black tiled slopes cascade into the courtyard.
The sign, the signal — flares, poised to leap in my face. But I am absorbed, drawn to locate the source. Finding two men at a dining table, a fragment of the restaurant’s wooden heart, dragged into the shade of the wide overhang. Chefs linger after the breakfast hush, in the twilight of their toil, gathered in the stillness of wooden posts and braced beams — Aetheria’s hand is in the arrangement. But I’m blind, tethered to the tangible novelties of the culture, clinging to what I can name, and grasp.
I descend from the logia to face the young receptionist behind the open-air front desk. From the Japanese garden, the middle-aged woman, a motherly figure approaches — a message circuit, clued in about her guest, delivers -- “Michel only comes back on Friday evenings.” surprising me, ‘Answering yesterday my phone conversation with Philips’ home office?’
I’m left with the quiet certainty of diving into boredom, much like the young receptionist lull at a small hotel front desk out-of-season. Her eyes wide open at what transpired, I linger, chatting, until the language barrier swells my head. On a passing thought, I slip away — walking up the entry-pavilion, into the dirt street.
Roaming, into the cracks of Bali, I pass a leather tailor’s shop and step inside. The man’s eyes measures me. “Hundred dollars, I’ll make a jacket — bring me yours, as a model.” I leave, pondering on my most comfortable light sky-blue jacket, at imagining the tailor unstitching my jacket and then resewing — that sounds like too much work. The thought drifts out of my mind, ‘I’m not a tailor!’
I walk on through sunlight. Ahead, five artist labor over a dragon sculpture — hands coaxing concrete into breath, into movement, an organic thing rising from stone. But these mythical sculptures live everywhere, scattered across the island like relicts of ongoing creation. Strolling further on, I cross the usual suspects — aging white male tourists, strewn among the early open-air restaurants’ hostesses.
In early evening, I enter the Japanese restaurant, forbearing into the shadows of the musicians’ stage — silent stereo buffers, microphone stands. Cables trailing into the rear of a television perched on a stand — a musicians' delight. So the stage appears to the layman of my existence. Yet, my curiosity is drawn offside, into the dim corner, where a gathering of figures lingers. A tenfold friend, couples drawn together around woven cane tables pushed together. Their voices an inaudible murmur, I shut off. As I’m crossing the dining hall, toward the bar, where the girls in kimono. Their usual shaking loose, their eyes whispering to each other, their laughter drifting whispers through the aviary, across the sparsely populated, wide-spread dining tables.
Leaning on a stool, behind the bar two girls in kimono serve my glass of red wine, emerge from the open end, drifting toward a quarto cluster of kimono-clad huddle around a mother with her newborn. As they scatter, Iluh in the lead approach, gliding into my periphery, assuming over my shoulder. I’m drawn into Iluh’s joy with her capuchin, tiny pelt on her shoulder, perched big bright-eyes, with a child’s mischief, as Iluh brims with playful pride.
Between gestures meddling with English words, she greets me, her gaze sweeping from the Iluh's capuchin onto me, lingering. ‘This is my baby. . .’ Her fingers brush the capuchin’s bright red collar, the chain draping along her flank. The tiny creature basks in the attention, nudging closer.
Until, baby soft, the tiny fingers, the miniature creature leaps on my shoulders, sharp claws dig into my skin. I reason that, in the wild, Iluh's capuchin clutches a sustaining pelt grip while its mother leaps the branches of a forest canopy — curios and restless on my shoulder.
Iluh’s joy is piercing, her mane of curly black puff of hair spilling over her shoulders, framing her pale olive complexion, bright and unguarded. Her eyes glistening, another world swirls, as her ducky-lipped smile is laced with a blooming curiosity. Etches herself into my mind, imprint, a caste apart from the kimono girls. She lingers as a wave of evening guest trickle through the entrance. The Iluh's capuchin crawls back to Ilhu -- princess of the restaurant — unhurried, unbothered — as the other girl, come and go serving, until the weight of unspoken words, the lock of language, sways. I stand, slipping away into the night, toward my hotel.
Helios’ fierce light spills through the curtains, summoning the day. I rise to reckon with the village’s pulse, slipping into my sky-blue jacket and set off, memories marking the landmarks, mapping the street grids until I reach the leather tailor’s shop. Pressing the door open, I faced the tailor, slide out my jacket, to his hands over with a weary hint — ‘What are you going to do?’ His handiwork hangs in dense, tailored clutters, cluttering the shop — a table layered with hides he folds back to select. I chose a mottled and silk to the touch skin, before stepping back outdoors, untethered, letting the streets pull me into the town’s drift.
The restaurant street stretches toward the outskirts, crack the gleam of the sea, to the lingering rumors stir through town. To my dismay, approaching a boom gate sketching the golden strand dissolving into the sea’s wavering blues — a quiet ridicule of a horizon reserved. Amid the chaotic, shaded rows of fenestrated facades, I step closer to a figure lingering figure, shielded from the sun. As the spill of light unveiling a uniform on standby, my lingering question is answered, before a silent sentinel, I ask. “Why aren’t I free to walk to the beach . . . ?”
“It keeps the beggars off the beach.” he replies.
‘Fair enough, a minor inconvenience,’ zephyrs through my mind. I gamble away the two-hundred-rupiahs access fee, in exchange for an official ticket, conjuring an image of a siren stretched on the golden sand, I knew the town’s whispers false, worth chasing, I’m drawn toward the sea’s ebb.
Walking along the water seam, short of wetting my shoes, I pass along the beach swell — in the distance a woman’s man stripping her cloth. The aftermath unspool — her flabs unfurling as she sinks to all fours, a sight I turn from in shame — supine, topless, lost in her own unraveling, spent skins, tap sacks and empty bota bags lie strewn around her collapsed youth.
Though, far scattered, from worth my regard, I grow weary of these darkened bodies, abandoned on the beach — far from the polished figures gracing glossy magazine covers. I slip away, rounding the beachfront block, into the stifling interstice where lean, fenestrated facades, stretch without polished plaques of architectural pride. Breaking into wall-less eateries, where scarce figures linger in the midst of communal tables, hunched over a meal.
Helios, wearied, leans toward the sea, cracking the golden reflection reaching behind me, ahead casting dusk. I veer off. In the stretching on the street, I lean away, crossing the gritty, deserted apron. Press the door, and I step into a quiet elegance — the Japanese pleasantry greets me, bright-eyed, broad-smiled kimono girls, scattered blossoms across the dining hall.
I’m sentient to the believed-rooted magic of Balinese culture — Iluh stands amidst a kimono girl shouldering her, bright-eyed. I’m offered a drink she prepared, I conceded to her the pleasure. But a feline lick of irritation, when she serves her cocktail across the counter.
When I’m back into yesterday momentum — with lingering glimpses on the amber-blonde, idling hours into the night — teased into the symbiotic zodiacal quiz, at first, a Libra’s elegance stirring within her, an alluring contradiction, her luminous intransigence, somehow out of place, tickling the edges of my mind. While out of the kimono hostess steps Iluh, doll-charming, proud, turning twenty, on the twenty-third — her moon in Scorpio While she guessed my age.
I stop short. “Are you mad at me?”
She unveils her Sun in Dog, clamping with canine jaws — flushing out what she set her mind on, Iluh, unflinching, says. “I want you.”
Iluh’s words hang out of place — a curse — ethereal, unreal. I let her words slip past, turning to the straw, biting with my lips, drawing a slow, prolonging sip — forgetting. But her hawk-eyed barmaid friend stayed behind when Iluh left her side. “Iluh wants it, but no money.”
The girls in Kimono tuck into the bar’s dead-end corner, speaking the air into tangible, whispers fluttering with the woman over the counter, on a customer’s stool. Then, Iluh detaches herself from huddling the other familiar kimono girl. Passing before me prolonging the gleaming walnut-trunk bar counter, Iluh emerges from the service aisle’s open end, to the dining area, behind me, while withered into her fifties, casual with the young girls in kimono, she’s poised a manageress’ demeanor, and an exchange taking place, the manageress steps to my side, and casually says, “She wants to go to bed with you.”
‘Hoops…’ That’s a direct, heavy blow to swallow — to my disbelieve, that rose from the trio’s earlier whispers. Iluh, reappears behind the bar, huddling into the head-end corner, fluttering whispers, with the other girl. Until, she paces past, rounding the open end into the dining area’s where, two kimono-clad hostesses blossom in pause, ready to greet arriving guests. But Iluh — bright eyes, her ducky smile — wraps her path toward me, her gaze laced with a mysterious intention before she grabs my hand. She turns, leading me away from my glass of fruit juice cocktail, slipping off my stool — shedding the beast of my ego, she's pulling me beyond the edge of my invisible comfort.
Cutting at an angle across the hall, I step on the musicians’ platform, shy of defiance, lay bare in my disbelief. Iluh hands me a microphone, keeping one for herself. Facing the television screen, she bends forward, loading a CD, flickering through selections, she retreats herself. I steal glances past the cracking stereo speakers as she settles on the white creeping words emerging from the edge of the screen, and against the music, encourages my amateurish attempt.
The lyrics scroll, flashing red at the center bottom of the screen. Iluh sings off the screen. My voice wavers, chasing the words as they crawl forward — white phrases creeping, the music fixating on the flashing red.
Dyslexia tangles my phonics, a ghost of reading class — the boys’ glares pinning my complexity down as I stumble, a grasshopper lost in syllabic rhythm. But nestled in the soft, knowing gazes of the girls, I find courage — just as I find myself drawn into Iluh’s wake.
“And I love you so;
The people ask me how;
How I've lived till now;
I tell them I don't know. . .”
The scattered male audience, predatory glares surfacing across the dining hall. Unanimous expressions mirror my croaking voice, forcing me to hear the lyrics through my ears, fracturing my concentration in all azimuths. Across the room, figures trickle through the swinging door — bewildered, eyes pinched against a dissonant pleasure, an amen of my worst.
Triggering my memory — of Goma's elementary school gymnasium, the class gathered in a crescent before the vacant stage, the music teacher leading the choir. After singing a musical phrase, and asking us to repeat the piece together, his finger darts — at me. He plucks me from the group, swiping me over in a circle toward the adjacent wide-flung double door gaping onto the sunlit playground.
Years have nurtured the thought — ‘I was the worst voice in the school?’ I wonder if I should feel sorry for the audience before me. But in Iluh’s gaze, in her tweeting voice piercing the air, my deep voice drowns. She sings her heart out — unshaken, radiant in her rhythm, holding me by her side.
Shame, and sweat, clings to me. The screen freezes. The audience’s glaring eyes linger, to fade into a huff of relieve. Iluh slips off her stool, approaches the screen, and bends over. She changes the Compact Disk, then returns to her seat. While she’s fixated, I brace for the worst to appear on-screen. A pause lingers, then, the music begins, the lyrics streaming forward: “… Love me tender, love me sweet, Never let me go, You have made my life complete, And I love you so … Love me tender, love me true, All my dreams fulfill, For my darlin', I love you, And I always will. . .” I catch up with Iluh pulse — her birdlike voice echoing, as I strain under extreme concentration, until I exhale in a sigh.
An old Japanese man rises from the offside row of chabudai, furnishing the peripheral dining hall. His gaze fixing, his return to the karaoke stage, rushing past the bar, edging a dozen tabled guests, stepping into the line of a man’s voice singing his number.
I’m comparing my performance to the audience's soft gazes — until, on my way out that evening, the petite amber-blond woman lingers at the edge of my vision, her peaceful demeanor unsettling my curiosity. My mind snaps, words spilling a phrase from a musical melody, thoughtless, yet instinctive. “What are you doing on this lost island?”
The amber-blonde snaps back, as if grasping for a trace of her culture, the sound of English on her tongue, blurting, “I’m married to a Balinese.” I slip from engaging myself with the woman, out in the street winds around the corner. Threading through the familiar narrow street prolonging the trench drain, where I often pass women — to one last lingerer outside her shack boutique, trickling water, offers her canang sari when the day fades.
I step through the Chinese entry pavilion, turning away from the unattended open-air reception, and grasp the garden’s base newel post. My fingertips trace the handrail as I ascend the flight of open red wooden stairs. At the top, I veer along the fenestrated facade toward my middle room. Framed by the shaded stillness of the loggia — posts and beams, knee braces — the structure lifts at the farthest reach, yielding to the looming roof of the neighboring Japanese restaurant, huddled in the night.
From the blind dark flank, she emerges -- kissed by moonlight spilling through the foliage, from the Chinese lanterns scattered across the garden below. I let the door to my room slip from my grasp, stepping toward the glow of her smile, lifted by the soft pulse of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake.
Afar, she leans against the railing of her blind balcony, her hand reaching around the corner, shadowing the efflorescence of the redwood Japanese rural cottage, a top floor suspended in the night. Her fingertips stretch beyond the thin air, heavier than silence, yearning to bridge the small pane’s glow -- Aetheria's mirage flickering across the redwood fenestrated facade, as the lean-to rooftop recedes, a chasm shy of Nyx’s grasp on the night. My fingers remain beyond her reach — until a crescendo in the music pulses, the language barrier dissolves, and a Swan Lake pirouette lifts us across the divide, drawn in the blooming hush of moonlight — hearts lifting in the quiet cadence of our dance.
Aetheria lingers in the warm moonlight glow, arbitrating between tangible worlds -- the music fades, our pleasantries dissolving. We turn away, toward our rooms, toward the retreat of solitude.
Lying in bed, Nyx veils the sky beyond my curtains, my mind adrift. Memory unleashes a stark glare -- Helios riding high -- pulling me back to the confusion at the Japanese restaurant. The door shuts, sealing out the glare.
Iluh figures by the offside bar, black curls spilling over her shoulder, framed against the shelf display glittering figurines. I slip onto a stool. The kimono-clad girls move in pairs, approach onto serve my drink, while Iluh, unsettled, perches sidesaddle at the bar’s heel, her jeans stretching into the open air. As I sip, she unfolds her knees, stepping down, circling behind me, easing toward the open end of the counter.
Her gaze, enigmatic, skims past me -- sidling around the lamentable middle-aged man. Behind the bar, Iluh lingers, sliding a glass of beer before him with a quiet scoff, frowns -- drown in yours; I have my own burdens. A gentle nudge, deepening his silent lament, held between his fingers.
In my thoughts, I doze, slipping beyond wakefulness, Iluh glistening -- pearls of sweat rolling down her forehead. Slipping into the corner shadows, shining the cash register. A kimono hostess murmurs to the manageress, who observes with gentleness, tracing Iluh -- not herself -- as she snubs, scribbles on a blank bill. She weaves past the lone patrons -- shirts unbuttoned in the evening’s creeping humidity -- edging past dining tables vanishing into the far corner door.
A silhouette returns. Iluh emerges from the gapping kitchen’s fluorescent glow, by the swing shut behind her. A steaming plate in her hand. She places the dish before the man, retreating behind the bar, swallowing frustration. At the counter’s heel, she bends over the sink. Unexpected, a rural simplicity: cupping her hands beneath the faucet’s running water, bending, slurping a drink.
Morning chirps emanate from the foliage, sunlight sleek against the curtain folds. A week of whimsy anticipation -- while waiting out the final hours for my mentor, Michel, to emerge from a land survey mission. I head toward the Japanese restaurant. Haphazard found Iluh washes drinking glasses to abandon.
Inside the Japanese restaurant, I find Iluh at the bar’s far end, arms plunged, in frothy sink water among fragments of emersed soaking glasses. Seeming to hear the whispers of my approaching steps, my quiet slip onto the barstool, the warmth of my gaze a current through her hair -- she wipes trickling sweat from her face, exhales — a sigh passing through fretful Shiva's hands. Wild tugging her shirt seems loose from her jeans, waving the fabric, fluttering the collar butterfly wings stirring against the heat.
The capuchin Iluh — playful, frivolous, her duckling lips blunt, outspoken, her name flitting from all the girls’ lips -- gone now, in her absence, the lights dim, the laughters fades. I wade through a quiet confusion, as Iluh sidesteps. Her eyes dulled with fatigue, propping her elbows on the counter, paces past me half-hearted. I ask, “Iluh. . . What's wrong.”
She presses her fingers against her frown. “My head is sick,” One Iluh shadowing the other -- Swan Lake Iluh, her profile softened western roundness, enigmatic, distant. I find her behind me, at a dining table, slouch on spread elbows, eyes doodling across the surface, fingers idly tracing invisible shapes. The hush of her presence, a warmth that tugs at my heart.
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