The Slap

  On awakening that first morning there, Aisha found that she had begun once again to feel. Her eyes opened, alert, just before dawn. She could hear Hector snoring lightly and she was suddenly gripped by an unforgiving jealousy: she was enraged. She crept out of bed, put on a T-shirt and sat out on the balcony. She waited for the sun to rise, all the time thinking of her husband with another woman. Slowly, thankfully, the sun began its ascent, splintering the sea into a million blue-silver shards. Dozens of kayaks and boats were dotted on the horizon, the fishermen like small insects as they dragged in their nets. When Hector finally rose he was playful and flirtatious, wanting sex, flashing her his erection from under the sheet. It repulsed her and she snapped at him, Don’t be so childish. In minutes they were squabbling. They ate a rushed breakfast, reading yesterday’s edition of the Jakarta Post, occasionally glaring at each other over the top of their newspapers. An elderly New Zealand couple tried to be friendly with them but Aisha was in no mood and gave monosyllabic answers while Hector was overly friendly, insincerely polite, deliberately chivalrous. His falsity sickened her. She abruptly rose from the table without a word to the couple or her husband. She grabbed her bag and walked confidently to the beach. She did not turn back, knowing he would follow. He did, red-faced and furious. She threw her towel on the sand, put on her sunglasses and began to read her book. Hector ran into the water.

  She could not concentrate on one word on the page. She was in a rage. A fucking nineteen-year-old? He had been with a child! The bastard had no idea how that made her feel. She looked down at her long-limbed body. She could tell herself that she was attractive, but it would not matter. She did not believe it. Her skin was still smooth, the cellulite hardly visible, her tits had not yet started to sag. None of that mattered. He should not have told her the girl’s bloody age. She turned onto her stomach and looked up the beach. Near a cluster of boats moored on the sand, two young Balinese men were smoking. They had been looking at her. The oldest had fine oriental features, long, greasy black hair and a short, sleek goatee. The other boy had a broad, almost Semitic tanned face. He wore a grease-stained white singlet that fitted tightly around his dark, muscular chest. Unlike the older boy, who wore long cream cotton pants, he was wearing denim shorts that fell to above his knees and revealed equally well-muscled calves. He suddenly winked at her and the confident rudeness of the wink reminded her of Hector’s cousin, of Harry. She turned her face away from them, ignoring their breezy laughter. He was probably nineteen. She clutched a fistful of sand, squeezing it tight, watching it trickle through her grip. He was a child, just a fucking child.

  A sprinkle of cold water splashed on her back. Hector was above her, drying himself. He was grinning. ‘You should come in. It’s fantastic. ’

  She turned onto her back, ready to snap at him. He was silhouetted against the clear, open sky and she had to shield her eyes with her hand to see him properly. His smile was wide, the hair on his chest and torso was wet and flattened. There was hardly any fat on him, and that which was there, small bumps around his hips, his slightly chunky thighs, was masculine, comforting. She stifled her complaint. There was a photo of her husband from when she’d first taken Hector to Perth. Whose photo was it? Rosie’s? Ravi’s? They had all gone south to Margaret River for five days of camping and joints and reading and bushwalking. And swimming of course, lots of swimming. Hector had seen dolphins and his childlike wonderment had made all of them shriek with laughter. Someone took a photo of him from below, a young boy in his early twenties framed against an almost domed bright blue summer sky. He was the most handsome man she had ever seen and he was still the most handsome man she had ever seen. Of course a nineteen-year-old girl would fuck him, of course a nineteen-year-old girl would swoon to be wanted by him. All those years and he still had her in his grip.

  ‘Don’t you ever betray me again,’ she shouted, and suddenly she was in tears. ‘You’re not allowed to sleep with another woman. Never again. Don’t you fucking dare.’

  He looked shocked. Two male tourists were walking past. They stopped on hearing her shouts and she turned her face away from them. Hector, forcing a smile to his face, mouthed, We’re okay. Both of the men were in their fifties, in ridiculously small and tight matching black speedos, one short, fat and dark, the other one tall, skinny with his body shaven smooth all over. Reluctantly they nodded back at Hector and resumed their stroll. Aisha watched them walk past the Balinese boys. They stopped and talked amongst themselves, then the fat man turned and stooped next to the boys. They spoke for a few moments and then the youth jumped to their feet and followed the men along the beach.

  Hector shook his head in disgust. ‘Those poor kids.’

  She rubbed her eyes, smearing the salty tears across her face. ‘They’re probably nineteen.’

  He turned a sheepish face towards her. He sat next to her on the sand and touched her shoulder. She flinched.

  ‘How could you?’

  ‘It meant absolutely nothing.’ His voice was meek.

  ‘Are you going to do it again?’

  ‘I’m not going to see her again.’

  ‘I meant with anyone.’

  He didn’t answer straight away. A young man walked towards them, brandishing a set of snorkelling gear for rent. She shooed him away.

  ‘Aish, I don’t know what I’m going to do tomorrow, let alone for the rest of my life. I do know I will never leave you, that I will never love anyone but you. But I can’t promise I won’t have sex with another woman again in my life. I don’t want to lie to you anymore. I just don’t.’

  He thought he was being so brave. Fuck you, she wanted to say, lie to me. We’ve been lying for years. He had given expression to something she’d known since they’d first got together, something she had even joked about with Anouk and Rosie. But in saying it, in giving it voice, making it real, she would forever be wondering as he lay next to her in bed at night, Have you been fucking someone else? She would be straining to smell another woman’s perfume or her scent. To hell with your honesty. She couldn’t leave him because her love was bound up with his beauty—she loved being next to him, adored being the most attractive couple in the room, couldn’t let that go. Together they were more than the sum of their parts. She wanted to say take your fucking honesty and stick it up your arse.

  She jumped to her feet and ran into the water, dived into the warm, gently rippling grey-green waves. She swam out as far as she could, she could hear thrashing, loud splashing behind her. He was following her. She took a deep breath, put her head under water and willed herself into one ferocious final effort to pull apart from him. He was too fast, much stronger than her. He caught up with her, then was under her, lifting her straight out of the water. She thought he was going to throw her into the sun. Instead, he held her tight and she felt the ropy thickness of his arms around her, the firm muscles of his chest. She surrendered. It was such bliss to drop away from herself and be held by him halfway between the ocean and the sky. She closed her eyes. She was his.

  That night they saw the full moon over Amed. After their swim together, her mood lightened but she had not yet forgiven him. They spent the afternoon apart, Hector reading and swimming, Aisha taking a long walk along the coast road that cut through four or five villages. Everyone was busily preparing for the night’s festivities. The women and girls sought shelter from the burning sun under the shared verandah of the village compounds, where they were busy cooking the delicious array of sweets and spiced cakes to be offered to the gods and ancestors; the men and boys were in the temples, sitting in circles, praying, each wearing a brightly coloured tunic and a sharp-cornered triangular headdress. Only the very young children followed Aisha, practising their English on her, a weird amalgam of Australian colloquialisms and American hip-hop slang. At one point, feeling the fierce dry heat, she sat near a well and listened to the conversations of the women and children. She felt peace in watching the preparations for the religious festival, their Hinduism both reas
suringly familiar and strangely exotic. Aisha’s upbringing had not been religious—both her parents were determined secularists. Their religion was democracy—the labyrinthine devotions of Hinduism were almost an embarrassment to them. But Aisha’s paternal grandmother had been devout and as a little girl she had delighted in assisting her Nani prepare the daily sweetmeats and rich milk desserts for the gods. Then her Nani died and religion went the way of fairytales and dolls, the stuff of childhood to be forgotten. Eavesdropping on the Balinese now she felt neither nostalgia nor loss. She did not even feel that way in a Hindu temple in India itself. She simply enjoyed the serenity of ritual and family. As the sun began to drop in the sky she gathered her bag and walked briskly back to the hotel. Sweat was streaming down her face and as she opened the gate she nearly collided with a young maid coming down the steps to offer fruit and cake to the ancestors. Aisha bowed to the girl, muttered permisi, and watched her place the laden banana leaf onto the first step. The girl flicked a match and lit the incense.

  Hector was curled naked on the bed, snoring the same way his son did. Aisha knelt on the bed and kissed her husband’s shoulder. He awoke and looked straight into her eyes. His were alert, shining, concerned.

  ‘Am I forgiven?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He was not forgiven yet, not inside her, but she would forgive him, she knew that. He smelt sour, of sweat and heat. She kissed his shoulder again and then stripped and went for a shower. The sharp bursts of cold water were a soothing delight and she let the water hit her face as she arched her neck and stared straight up to the sky above. As she turned off the tap she was startled to hear what she thought was her husband crying. She stepped out into the bedroom, the towel wrapped around her. Hector had slipped on his shorts and was on the balcony. He was smiling when he turned to face her but she could see that his eyes were red.

  ‘How about a swim before we head out for dinner?’

  She had just showered, she didn’t feel like a swim. But she feared that if she said she wanted to lie in bed reading he would stay with her. She didn’t want to talk. She didn’t want any more confessions or apologies or revelations. She didn’t want to ask him if he had been crying.

  They returned to the same restaurant in the village where they had gone for dinner on their first night in Amed. The owner, a chatty young man called Wayan, had impressed them both with his charm and humour. At first they had both thought him still only an adolescent, but as they were about to leave that first night he’d introduced them to his two young sons. The food that night was excellent, delectable and spicy, cooked by Wayan’s wife who’d remained invisible in the kitchen. Seeing them again tonight, Wayan greeted them with delighted laughter and led them onto the beach, sat them at the table closest to the water. This full moon night he’d swapped his denim shorts and fake Mossimo T-shirt for traditional ceremonial dress. Two Italian men seated at the table directly under the shade of a palm tree, nodded to them as they were seated. They were young, heavily tanned, as if they had spent months under the Asian sun. She and Hector ordered beers and she sat back in her chair, watching the last of the sun disappear in the horizon.

  It felt like a first date. The events and emotions of the last week had forced Aisha to view her life anew. Her husband, for the first time in so long, appeared mysterious, a stranger. Her rage was gone. The sense of betrayal was still there, she knew it, somewhere underneath, waiting to be released. But now was not the time to give it expression. She wanted her husband to return to her, she did not want him to be the despairing, vulnerable creature he had revealed himself to be. The moon’s borrowed light was beginning to cleave a rippled silver path along the darkening surface of the sea. She would keep her anger submerged. She wanted to make peace with her husband so she could pull him back to land. He was too far adrift; if he were to fall apart, her life too would be shattered. She would be patient with him. She had learned patience as a mother. Sacrifice, too. She beamed at her husband, nodded out to the slowly bobbing waters.

  ‘I’m so glad we came here.’

  He began to cry. She bit her lip; her impulse was to order him to stop it, to not be a child. Thankfully this time his tears lasted a short moment. The two young Italian men, so vain and distant, had not even noticed. She found herself ignoring Hector, thinking instead of how, in the end, she preferred the North Americans to the Europeans, who too often, like the men at the next table, were snobbish, ungenerous and arrogant. Hector sniffed, wiped at his eyes, and took up his menu. She looked at him, her expression quizzical, unsmiling.

  ‘I’m fine. I don’t deserve you.’ Oh Christ, don’t let him start crying again. ‘I’m so ashamed, Aish.’

  She too looked down at the menu. She had no idea what would be the right thing to say. She felt bereft, drained of any compassion or sympathy towards him. At the same time she felt him to be completely in her care. It was this distance between her intentions and her desire that was making her so weary. She would have been furious if he had not felt shame. But she did not want to minister to his grief, his self-pity and to his sense of failure. A cruel thought flashed quickly and guiltily in her mind: be a man, deal with your fucking mid-life crisis—it is so boring. She scanned the list of dishes. She would order the whole fish smoked in a banana leaf in nonya spices. She shut her menu.

  ‘I’m going to call Sandi when I get home, congratulate her on being pregnant.’ He brightened as soon as she said the words, his eyes widening in relief. She immediately regretted her impulsiveness. I will concede nothing else, she promised herself. Again she experienced a wave of weariness, a numbing heaviness to her neck and shoulders, to her very bones. This, finally, was love. This was its shape and essence, once the lust and ecstasy and danger and adventure had gone. Love, at its core, was negotiation, the surrender of two individuals to the messy, banal, domestic realities of sharing a life together. In this way, in love, she could secure a familiar happiness. She had to forego the risk of an unknown, most likely impossible, most probably unobtainable, alternative happiness. She couldn’t take the risk. She was too tired. And anyway, she scolded herself, the moon is hanging low and gigantic and golden over Amed, I am with my handsome husband who loves me and encourages me, who makes me feel safe. I am safe and that’s all the world wants, only the young and the deluded would want anything else, believe that there is anything more to love than that.

  ‘It’s fantastic she’s got pregnant. I know how hard she’s been trying.’

  ‘I know, it’s terrific, isn’t it.’ Hector was beaming, thrilled. ‘Harry told me at his birthday that if they hadn’t got pregnant by the summer they were going to try IVF. That would have been so hard on them.’

  ‘On Sandi, don’t you mean?’ Harry. He would be the cost of her concession; she and Harry would be forever partners in a strained dance of pretence and evasion. Her voice rose. ‘It would have been tough on Sandi. Harry would have been fine. Harry will always be fine.’

  Hector caught the scorn in her voice and his happiness ceased, his smile evaporated. She couldn’t help it, it was spiteful, but she was glad. He beckoned Wayan over and they ordered.

  ‘People do change, Aish.’

  She had been looking out to sea and was at first confused by his words. She laughed cynically when she finally understood his meaning. ‘Harry will never change.’

  Hector groaned. ‘He’s apologised for hitting Hugo. They’ve dragged him through court, they fucked him well and truly. What else do you want from him?’

  ‘I’m not just talking about that. You know what I’m referring to.’

  ‘Jesus, that was over ten years ago...’

  She snapped. ‘He bashed her. The bastard bashed her.’ She was glaring at him, coiled and alive and ready to strike.

  He did not answer. She knew he was recalling the night as well. She had been pregnant with Adam. They heard the car’s brakes screech in their driveway and when Sandi had emerged, the blood thick and black on her shirt and pants, they had thought her
drunk. Then they realised that her nose was broken, her lips split, her jaw so dislocated she could not speak. She fell on Hector and two teeth dropped onto the ground. Leave him, Aisha said, almost making it an order. But Sandi had not left him. Hector took her to the hospital on Bell Street and she told them she had fallen down the Fairfield Station steps. She and Aisha had never spoken about it since.

  ‘He’s never hit her again.’

  ‘So he says.’ Aisha lifted her head and looked her husband straight in the eyes. ‘I will visit Sandi, I will be a friend. But I will never forgive your cousin, do you understand? I hate him. I detest that he is in my life.’

  Hector was the first to blink, to look away. ‘I understand,’ he mumbled, and she believed him. She breathed a sigh of relief.

  Her anger dived back into the deep, straight under the waves, down to the depths. She smiled serenely. ‘It’s a heavenly night, isn’t it?’

  She did not feel normal again until they were home, until she walked out into Melbourne Airport and saw her children. She scooped them both into her arms, smelt them, Adam’s bracing, earthy scent, Melissa smelling girly and fresh, of the honey and almond soap that Koula used; they both smelt of garlic and lemon and of her in-laws’ home. She wanted to take them away, for them all to be together as a family. This was life, this was what mattered, this was what made all the concessions and compromises and defeats worthwhile. She could not let them go, held her daughter’s hand in the car, kept sweeping her hand across Adam’s hair. They chatted away to her, interrupting, arguing, calling each other names, telling her about school and sports and Giagia and Pappou and about the cat and about football and about dancing lessons and about Australian Idol and their friends and their trip to the cinema and she took it all in and wanted to hear about it again and again. She had missed out on two weeks of their young lives. The moon over Amed, the rich smells and succulent food, the hours lazing in the sun, none of that compared to the two weeks she had missed out of her children’s lives. She couldn’t help herself squeezing their knees, kissing them, touching them. Melbourne unfolded tediously and grimly as they drove down the freeway towards the city. It looked like a carcass that had been out in the sun for too long, stripped of life, of meat, of texture, of smell. But when Manolis dropped them all off in front of their house she had to stop herself from crying with relief.