Free Island of Demons by Nigel Barley

kind man. Pocket buttoned. All over.
    Hamid took my hand-luggage to the top of the gangway and set it down, unallowed to go any further. For the first time he unashamedly hugged me. There were genuine tears in his eyes that I felt damp on my neck as his cheek touched mine. What was he thinking, feeling? I had no idea. I knew nothing about anything any more. But here was a new place, a whole new world. I could be anything I wanted here. If I chose not to, I need not think about how to capture the light on the waves or the billowing smoke hanging over the stern. I was free. Then, I looked over hugging Hamid’s shoulder and, as I blinked away my own tears, there on the dock, by some enchantment, stood two familiar figures – my mother and my father, staring up and frowning.

3
    They had come by the quicker Suez route and beaten me by three days, driven, it seemed, by a mixture of parental panic on my mother’s and commercial adventurism on my father’s part. Largely as a result of the contacts made through my social elevation, he had become interested in colonial wares which, that year, set records in the sugar trade for production and price.
    â€œWho is your friend?” My mother’s eyes were, as ever, sharp.
    â€œA bright young man who taught me some very useful vocabulary. The Javanese are, as you see, a hot-blooded race whose passions are easily moved.”
    All about us, Javanese, doubtless hot-blooded, were easily moved, indeed running at the imperial trot, carrying sacks, hauling baggage, coiling ropes, sweat flowing over gloriously muscled limbs yet still smiling when their eyes met mine. White overseers ticked clipboards and shouted orders from the shade.
    â€œWe are at the Hotel des Indes,” declared father with a certain pride. “Room 374. We’ll head off and make arrangements while you check your luggage through the customs shed. They say it will take about an hour. You won’t need to hire any of the guides. Just take a car, everyone knows it.” This being a moment of great emotion, he touched me lightly on the shoulder.
    â€œYou will not,” urged mother moving off on his arm, “I am sure, allow yourself to become distracted by the … picturesque.” I did not greatly like her choice of the word or the emphasis she put on it as she waved her arm at the male dockside bustle.
    In the great echoing hall with its smell of dust and mildew, officials were ready with their regulations and chalk. A British couple were arguing about their luggage: “No, Kitty. There were three brown suitcases and the small black one with the dodgy handle”, “Cedric, you know full well that broke in Singers and we got the grey one with the brass fastener”, “Yes but then you bought so much in Cold Storage I had to take it back out of the rubbish and use it to put the shoes in”.
    My single bag was hauled up onto a bench like an exhibit and I stepped forward. A man with brilliantined hair and a permanent sniff yawned, asked, “Reason for visit?”
    Absurdly, I was nonplussed. “Boredom, a sense of loss, perhaps the search for some meaning and inspiration in a pointless life of artistic failure but popular success, also the extreme beauty of your male subjects whom I hope to thoroughly debauch whilst painting them and so liberate myself from shame and frustration at my own disgusting sexual perversion.” I did not, of course, say that, contenting myself with a vacuous “Er … tourism.” Come to think of it, they probably mean the same thing. He yawned, sniffed and sketched a cross on the leather as if in apostolic blessing.
    The Hotel des Indes was a brilliant white creation in the new art deco style, a thing of exaggerated concrete horizontality, like the towering superstructure of a vast underground ship. It stood on a busy street just down from the prestigious Harmonie Club whose heavily moneyed members ruled this sprawling