Empire of the East by Norman Lewis

guess what was coming.
    ‘Andy’s on his way,’ Gawaine said.
    ‘Sorry, I don’t follow.’
    ‘He’s pulling out. Off to Medan.’
    ‘With the road closed?’
    ‘Don’t ask me what’s happened. They’re letting a bus through, so it’s all rubbish about the bridge being down.’
    ‘Where is he now?’
    ‘At the bus station.’
    We drove round to the bus station where Andy was waiting for me, and doing his best to raise a smile. ‘What’s it all about?’ I asked.
    ‘Last night I telephone my wife. She worries for me.’
    ‘I know she does,’ I said. ‘I appreciate your problem. If the bus is going now, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t. We’ll be out of Aceh in a couple of hours and your troubles will be over. All you have to worry about is the rain, and the forecast is OK.’
    ‘They say they no let your car go.’
    ‘Come and ask him with me.’
    The policeman had been changed. This was an older man with an expression of professional severity.
    Andy asked him in the ingratiating manner it is safer to employ with the Indonesian police if we could safely go to Berastagi. Using one of the five forms of the negative which complicate the Indonesian language, he replied, ‘Belun’, meaning ‘not yet’.
    We thanked him and backed away. ‘Well, that clearly means tomorrow, doesn’t it?’ I said to Andy.
    ‘Can mean tomorrow, or maybe one month. Can mean anything you want.’
    ‘So you’re absolutely set on going?’
    ‘My wife worry and I must go to her.’
    We walked with him to the bus where two other hopeful travellers had already taken their seats and the driver was at the wheel. Our leave-taking was an affectionate one, and we were sorry to see him go. He had been dogged by fear almost from the first moment of our meeting, but on the whole had managed to keep it in the background, and had made himself useful and pleasant in every way he could. In his unobtrusive way he had managed to impart information about the way his people looked at human relationships that I suspected many foreigners who lived or worked in the country may not wholly have understood.
    Always descend from car, smile, and ask for excuse before requiring directions of road.
    Say always taxi man, ‘Where you learn drive so well?’
    Not to drink lady’s health in glass from bucket of soap powder.
    For waiter you must be saying, ‘Food delicious.’ If not delicious saying, ‘Sorry for cook too busy today.’
    In crowd with ladies best keep arms folded.
    With us he had never had the opportunity to prove his worth as a guide except through the labyrinths of oriental protocol, where he would have been hard to beat.
    There was an afternoon to be used up. We had plans for the exploration of what sounded like untouched rainforest that actually came tumbling over the mountainside down to, and within sight of, the town. On further consideration it was decided to devote a full day to this the next day, planning instead to spend an hour or two in the old fishing village, so far overlooked.
    Even in an uninteresting town like Tapaktuan that happens, at least, to be on the coast, it is always pleasant to spend time in the port area, to enjoy the shape and colour of the boats, and the animation of the maritime scene. Tapaktuan possessed no port, but miraculously the old fishing, village, unchanged probably for a thousand years, had so far not only been spared but ignored. It was at the end of a few hundred yards of beach, full of shallow lagoons and savagely coloured rocks, standing on great slabs of sandstone which descended like stepping stones to the water. The fishermen had built their houses of dark ferruginous wood, under deep blond thatches, and they were in the shade of wide-spreading firs through which the breeze never ceased to stir. A great assortment of feluccas and catamarans had been lined up in short order on the beach, and around them were heaped up the nets, fishing pots, windlasses, anchors and the rest of the