Bali 1982 As Published in the Lost Bali Stories compiled by Leslie Franklin — Nobody had seen Steve, for ages. Seemed strange, he was a regular on our circuit, which meant he could have been anywhere, India, Nepal, Thailand, Ibiza, The States. During this time, few if any one of us had permanent residences, much less telephones, the internet was still uninvented, but our pipeline of word of mouth, various Poste Restantes, and mail drops around the world, still everyone somehow knew each other’s whereabouts and kept in touch.
Seemed strange he should miss a season in Bali, where he, as most of us at that time produced a small but very high quality amount of handmade garments for European and American customers. They were highly valued by those in the know, and a staple at flea markets from Goa to Ibiza, Amster- dam and New York. Usually the foundations of were made from antique batik sarongs dating from the 1940’s, which were readily available in the market places of Jogjakarta, or from the massage ladies who combed the beaches in Bali.
Oddly rite about the time we were wondering, as often is the case with people you don’t see for a while, he showed up. He appeared at my door in Golden Village with suitcases in his hands around 5:30 PM with a new girlfriend, just as we were sitting down for a sunset drink, and rollin one. “Where have you been?” I asked, “We were just talking about you”
Steve explained that he was getting a maddening amount of Déjà vu, here in Bali and decided to see a Manku (Balinese High Priest) about it. He sought out one of the highest, the ancient and renowned, most powerful of Shaman, Pak Jagra, of Singaraja, on the Northern coast of Bali, about 90 miles from our shack in Seminyak. He was interviewed and instructed by the shaman that should he really want to get in touch with his past lives, he needed to change his ways and go thru a strict cleansing ritual which lasted a year. The instructions were for him to drop out from all worldly pursuits for a year, no business, travel, and follow a strict regimen of yoga, fasting and meditation, and come back to see him exactly one year to the day and the priest would help him.
He had rented a small place on the outskirts of Taos and lived accordingly for the preceding 12 months.. These were the first few hours his girlfriend had ever been in Asia, and I thought this trip would be a lot for her to deal with. She seemed to be doing fine.
Steve was one of the more rational of our group and this kind of stuff sur- prised me coming from him. A Harvard grad, he did have a few eccentrici- ties, for one thing although in his mid 30’s and well-traveled he had somehow never managed to learn how to drive! He was a little stressed as he related how he messed up his reservations and lost a day in the air, traveled directly from New Mexico to LA. To catch a plane to Singapore and transit thru Jakarta to Bali and go directly to my house, and needed to jump in the car and try to make it over the mountains to Singaraja in order to get there on time. They had been traveling for over 26 hours and must have been shot.
He had to get there before midnight in order to follow the priests instruc- tions to the letter, and he needed a lift there. I thought this would be interest- ing and we agreed to do it, which meant leaving directly.
“Wait till you meet this guy, he turned himself into my dead grandmother!” Steve said, as he jumped into the front passenger seat. I rolled my eyes and tried not to smirk; skeptical to say the least. And off we went, in my open aired convertible yellow jeep. We took almost nothing more than a toothbrush, a blanket and a bag of fruit.
Ingele’s snow white Nordic radiance appeared to me as an Angel in my rear view mirror, as the golden sunset lit her from behind, she appeared to be surrounded by a glowing halo illuminating the tiny white peach fuzz on her cheeks and golden hair blowing in the breeze. (Now my wife, an angel she remains to me today…)
We sailed over cratered roads devoid of traffic into the late sunset as the mountain shadows softly blended from verdant greens into gradients of ultramarine and umbers. Always breathtaking, from any angle, Bali of the 80’s.
As we drove past various temples I realized it was a moonless night and the Balinese were observing the ritual of Tilem, Black moon and that the priest must have calculated this as an auspicious day for their meeting. The road was devoid of traffic but we were delayed by processions of Balinese going either to or from the countless temples we passed along the way, carrying offerings piled upon their heads, decked out in their ceremonial finest. Steve popped a cassette into the player and on auto reverse we listened to unintelligible repetitions of Hindu Mantras for the hours the ride would take us. He sat on the front seat and squeezed into lotus position and tried to meditate we chugged and lurched along. A look in the rear view mirror revealed our companions. Hi girlfriend (sorry I just met her that once and cant remember her name) was jetlagged and tried falling asleep on Ingle’s shoulder, which was close to impossible as we careened over potholes the size of small craters on the moon, lurched and leant into sharp corners, by now thru the cold dark mountains. I stopped the car and dug out a blanket for them as Ingela, rolled her Swedish serious blue eyes with the look of one who has unwillingly gotten herself into an adventure she wasn’t ready for when she happened to stop by for a sunset drink.
We caught our breath by the road in the fog and the darkness, there were no streetlights in Bali at that time, suddenly a family of monkeys appeared lthe largest one leapt into our car and grabbed the bag of fruit we had brought along for the trip. The girls screamed, Steve deeply into his meditation hadn’t stirred, his girlfriend shrieked, and I threw the Jeep into gear, into the darkness lurched the car and skidded to a halt, coming only a few centimeters from the cliff edge that would have sent us over the mountain into the blackness and depths below. The frightened monkeys screamed as they jumped into the darkness.
We took this to be an omen;, “lets stay focused, and slow down”, I told my- self. Nobody had a watch with them, but we figured we still had a few more hours until our midnight deadline. Onward we drove .Eventually we cleared the mountains in a series of twisting hairpin turns on the single lane broken tarmac that served as the main road leading thru the mountains that connected the Northern and Southern coasts. When we finally reached a lower altitude the fog and clouds behind us, we were greeted with a vision of the ocean sparkling below us illuminated by no light other than the thousands of stars visible on this moonless night. There above us in plain view the constellation Scorpio stood perfectly visible, I stopped again for a rest.
Steve finally came to, (I still can’t tell if he was sleeping off his jetlag, or deeply into his meditations) at least he finally hit the eject button and turned off the Mantras, “Where are we?” he spoke. Below and before us, from our perch in the foothills, was the town of Singaraja. Its few electric lights re- vealed a couple of Chinese shops, a Chinese temple, a Mosque, a Balinese temple, and a gas station… our next destination. We gassed up and found an open shop that sold ice cream bars, we shot thru the town and headed to the village of Lovina. Steve decided that we should rent a couple of rooms there by the sea and leave the women there, an idea they gladly went along with.
The next stop was to find the translator. The shaman spoke only Balinese and our limited knowledge of Bahasa Indonesia would have been useless. We drove thru the dark streets until we came to a little house with a faded and cracked powder blue doorway, barely large enough for my 6ft plus friend to squat in front of and start knocking. It was around 11:30pm, Lovinia 1986, the streets were deserted and dark, and from the car I just realized how odd this call must look. When the door finally opened a little man greeted us in perfect English, he seemed to recognize Steve and took our arrival matter of factly, not surprised to see us, and thought nothing strange about our request. “I’ve got to see Pak Jagra.”, he whispered.
There was still one more stop to make before we could get to the shaman’s door; we needed offerings. Steve explained that Pak Jagra didn’t accept cash for his services, and the translator, his assistant, led us to a tiny warung by a dimly lit by a flickering oil lamp. The odd thing was they only sold a few basic products, but had just what we needed. We stocked up on flowers, incense, bottles of sweet Balinese Brem wine, chewing gum, tiger balm. I was suddenly itching all over, and found a bottle of talcum powder there. I thought it was strange to find just what I was craving and put it down to coincidence.
The assistant eyed me warily as I proceeded to put it all over my skin, which was breaking out in little red bumps, everywhere. By the time I reached the door of Pak Jogra’s house I was inflamed with a rash that just sprung up, and an accompanying migraine. Maybe it was all the driving, or that last arak madu, I thought. Steve produced a couple of sarongs for us to respectfully put on before entering the pure grounds of his temple complex. We wrapped them over our jeans. “Leave me here Ill wait in the car, I’m ready to pass out,” I protested. The itching became unbearable and my headache was getting worse by the minute. The assistant shot Steve a sharp and knowing look, as they pushed me closer and up the stairs thru the narrow temple gates.
The inevitable snarling and howling Bali dogs announced our arrival. The compound consisted of a few small family spirit temples, and a small bunker like cinderblock building consisting of 2 rooms and one window. Outside a few kids were watching a tiny black and white TV; battle scenes blared which with my headache seemed to be at full volume.
When we entered, there in this stark room sat Pak Jagra, perfectly composed, in front of a small table on which laid a large open book and an oil lamp. The clock on the wall behind him said 11:55! He pointed to the last line on the open page, and there in bold English writing, was written Steve’s Name!
I’ve been expecting you he said! With no idea of the distances he had come to make this appointment. We piled the offerings on the table. I looked around the room. Nothing special, I thought, empty walls but for a round clock, the kind you might come across in a post office or the office of some government official. A dim and Flickering oil lamp illuminated the room. There was only one window with some thin curtains in front of it, the room was airless and stuffy once the door was closed, and the TV was outside in one of the pavilions but sounded as if it was rite in there with us. Mosquito coils and sweet incense choked me. Outside the door, chickens squawked, dogs barked in the darkness among the sounds of crickets and frogs. My head was bursting and I started sweating profusely. Before us stood the most powerful of Balinese white magicians.
He is credited with supernatural powers beyond comprehension, but to my mind didn’t really look like much. A small man, dressed immaculately in white, slight of build, bald, he had the unlined face of a newborn baby. His tight skin stretched around his bony open face like a living skull. He stared at us purely and clearly from deep-set eyes with the kind of depth that looked rite into your soul, as only one with a foot in both worlds can do. His spotted hands were scaly and wrinkled, his fingers looked like a pair of chicken legs and revealed an undefined age that could have been centuries.
I was still sort of skeptical but did find it strange that when he spoke I understood everything he said, better than the useless translator could, and all of the background noise floated off in a vast distance. It was a kind of direct, no chance of misinterpretation, perfect communication. Or was I just imagining this; exhausted from the long ride, or shaken from almost driving off the cliff?.. I wondered, exhausted I drifted off into a sort of half sleep.
Just 10 days ago in New York City, a cold night in Kennedy airport parking lot Cindy and I parted with a kiss. She handed me a list of production notes and things I had to do for our clothing business. She sadly remained behind to mind the office. The last-minute instructions were but a way of not men- tioning what was really on our minds.
The last few months some strange changes had occurred in her. A fashion model who became my business partner and fiancé, she truly represented the left brain part of the business. Chinese, a sharp business sense, quick with numbers and calculations, her contribution to our business was the perfect complement to my intuitive creative compulsions.
She was tall and graceful on the runway, as a successful fashion model, she was spending more time representing our line of fashion than modeling, to build a career and a future together. An empire was born and ruled from the expanses of the freezing 5000 ft loft that served as our studio, office, shipping room and home.
But those weren’t the changes that worried me; In the passing months she developed shaky hands, a quick temper, puffy cheeks and hands, and a host of symptoms that interested our family doctor. He recommended a specialist, a friend of his that was researching lymphangiomas, which sounded very scary to us.
Basiclly its a groth on the spleen that usually effects kids and rarely people into their 20’s, and rarely seen in someone as healthy as her. “Its not serious” he lied to me as I offered to delay my departure to Bali. Tomorrow she would be starting a series of tests that would get to the bottom of it. A tight production schedule had me booked on that flight. “And for God’s sake drive carefully” she warned, referring to the still un- healed broken wrist I brought back from Bali as a souvenir of my last trip. Motorcycle accident on Jln. Legian.
This floated into my head in my delirium as I sat entranced in the presence of the Shaman. He and Steve and the translator spoke for a while and then they disappeared into the next room. I poked my head in to get a glimpse, and was pushed violently out by his assistant. I got a quick look at the sec- ond room. It was dominated by a large alter packed with offerings, ceremo- nial bells and objects, vessels of holy water from the sacred spring of Tirta Ganga, and clouds of incense I put up no resistance and fell back into my chair in the next room by now almost delirious with exhaustion, a migraine and an itching that covered every inch of my sweat soaked body.
NI was nodding off and didn’t realize they had eventually reemerged, I was awoken by a gentle nudge by Pak Jagra. The translator sat on the floor before me as Steve plopped down in the chair to my right . He looked visibly shaken from this meeting that he prepared a year for. The priest looked at me, “Who is he?” he inquired as if aware of me for the first time. I understood immediately, ‘I’m just the driver.’, I answered meekly.
He looked at me for a second and held my hand; the headache melted away immediately and for the first time in hours the itching stopped. He indicated we needed to meditate together, all of us, as something big had just transpired in the next room and we were all part of it. As I bent into the lotus position and attempted to turn my palms upward, he noticed my inability to turn my right wrist from the motorcycle accident. He stoppedus and looked at me deeply. “Tell me about your life!” he demanded. I said everything is going fine, my business was doing well and I had a beautiful woman I was going to marry. In a flash he looked at me again and said, “she is very ill,” I hadn’t told anyone about Cindy in New York and that she had just gotten out of the Hospital, it blew my mind.
Now focusing deeply into my unblinking eyes he asked, “Does she look like this?” and rite before our eyes his face became hers. I was struggling to swallow as Steve nudged me with a look that said, “See, I told you so!” The old man got up, stood straight up and asked, “ Does she walk like this?” and this mad little old man, gracefully and elegantly proceeded to do what I called the “Cindy Shuffle”. Her signature strut I had seen on the fashion runways and catwalks of New York Paris and Milan.
I found myself fighting back tears and short of breath. With that he grabbed my wrist held it outstretched and proceeded to furiously rub his palms together. When he built up the desired amount of friction he held them over my broken wrist and the heat they radiated allowed it to effortlessly relax and roll over. I had seen the ex rays, the wrist needed to be rebuilt with bone grafted from my hip and it was scheduled to happen upon my return to New York. This defied the acupuncture and physical therapy treatments I was undergoing hoping to avoid this operation. “There’s black magic in your wrist”, he pronounced, casually and matter of factly, as one who sees this stuff everyday, He went on to explain that dark forces tried to keep me away from him by striking me with headache and itching. This gave me the chills. He explained that my skepticism had kept me closed but the energy bounces off to the closet person to me who is open. Which sort of made sense to me at that moment,…. under those circumstances.
He announced that he could help her, from here in Lovinia (?) In a little dark hut in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night?. He motioned for the three of us to sit in lotus position again, by now my wrist had gone completely numb, no feeling in it at all, and the annoying outside sounds had drifted off miles away.
The shaman instructed us to breath in and out; controlled breathing, in uni- son. As we did, breathe in…, breathe out…., breathe in…., breathe out…., and with each inhalation the little old man seemed to grow larger in posture and in stature, until he was towering over us in the flickering lamplight.
As he grew his face became twisted, lines appeared and veins on his arms and neck and forehead popped out, his eyes rolled over back in his head till they were only whites, and his shaky hands reached into another world; arms moving wildly as he deftly rearranged things in some netherdemension that for an instant we all were fully aware of. He seemed to reach thru this vortex and his hands grabbed and struggled with forces we can only remain skeptical of for our own sanity. His shadow was perfectly projected by the little oil lame p on the wall behind him. It seemed to be growing larger too. We continued breathing in unison he seemed to grow larger and larger everytime we inhaled and finally reached a crescendo let out a loud retching cough conjured up from his innermost depths, I was certain he would have a heart attack. At that moment and for the first time that night, a breeze blew into the room, moved the curtains into the room, swept around us and moved the curtains on the way out. The lamp flickered as it blew by, and the old man collapsed onto the floor, taking the table, book, offerings and oil lamp with him. “Get out” I screamed, “fire!” as the kerosene spread on the cement floor. Steve quickly removed his sarong and smothered the flame. The kids came running into the room and picked up the priest and carried him out, came back and cleaned up the mess and the smoldering sarong. I looked at the clock, 1:45am
When we finally stopped shaking, the priest explained what went on and what forces he had to contend with. I hardly heard him now completely focused on the situation with Cindy in New York. Finally recovered, we sped back to the rooms, woke up the girls, woke up the owner and probably all of the other guests, paid up and checked out. I had to get to a telephone; I had to reach New York and see what happened.
At that time the only available public phone capable of making long distance calls was at the airport, far on the other side of the island. We sped thru the jungles and over the mountains over deserted dark roads in silence arriving at the airport around 4:00 am. The time difference between New York City is exactly 12 hours, which made it around 4 in the afternoon in New York…
We woke up the man at the desk in the telephone office said it was an emergency, and waited the 30 or so minutes it took to get the connection thru the series of operators relaying the call thru Jakarta, Singapore and Hong Kong. Because of this impossible system international calls were really not something that happened much and being out of touch except via telex was pretty much a given.
Finally, a faint ringing was barely heard, the mosquitoes around my head the ringing in my ears were louder. After just a few rings the receiver was picked up and Cindy’s voice, as clear as a bell said Hello! I shouted to be heard, she asked, “why are you shouting? I can hear you perfectly!”
She related the events of the past few days: when she went in for the tests, they rushed her to the hospital where a serious growth was removed from her spleen, she had been in the hospital a few days and returned that morn- ing, feeling bad and barely able to get up. Around 1:30 she got up to answer the phone, it was her mother, during the conversation… around 1:45 she blacked out and collapsed into the chair and had been there at the desk for the last few hours. Funny, she said in a perfectly clear and even cheerful voice, “somehow rite now I feel great, better than I have in weeks.” More testing baffled the doctors in New York, who never witnessed a speedier and more complete recovery from her condition. Ex rays and further testing also made it unnecessary for me to undergo painful wrist surgery, though I’ve not regained full mobility of my right wrist, its only a slight problem and no surgery was ever prescribed again. The doctors say it must have been the acupuncture or physical therapy. Who knows?,