Island of Demons by Nigel Barley

a start and a stiff neck and cursed myself like a fool. We were in Denpasar, back in a world of concrete and corrugated iron and paradise had abruptly vanished. To one side white men in still whiter flannels were chortling and playing tennis on a great field, lavishly attended by ballboys and waiters. There were the usual ugly shops and drains. A sluttish woman was leaning, appropriately, on a large sign advertising the wares of the Goodyear rubber company. We turned into a gravel drive and there was the Bali Hotel. I was slightly relieved not to find my parents waiting on the verandah, peering out from the dusty box trees.
    Suddenly Bagus was by the side of the car, hands clasped in respect, head bowed, reaching for the door as my luggage was unstrapped by two strapping, bare-chested lads. It seemed that for Bagus I was now “ Tuan ”, “master”, and existed only in the third person. If Tuan would like to enter the hotel, his slave would attend to the car. Did Tuan wish for the car later? Then his slave would wash it and see Tuan again in the morning at ten o’ clock if that was acceptable to Tuan .
    â€œBagus, what about you? Where will you eat and sleep?”
    He blushed. Tuan should not concern himself about that. His slave would sleep in the car, the better to guard it, and they would feed his slave in the hotel kitchen.
    The hotel was a thing of potted palms and white tile floors with something of the disapproving air of a sanatorium. At the desk, a neat Eurasian signed me in and noted my easel. Perhaps I was a friend of Mr Piss? No? A pity. A most amusing gentleman, Mr Piss. Would I care to see the menu? The plat du jour was boiled gammon and cabbage. No thank you. Just a pink gin in the room that came with a white-painted hospital bed and enough white netting for three brides.
    I retired to the bathroom, ladled cool water over my head from the big maternal earthenware pot and felt the suffocation of the still air. It was the dry season and the refreshment of rain lay months off. I stretched out undried on the bed, barely resisting the temptation to throw off the mosquito net that gathered the heat down around me so that I flowed with sweat and groaned against the Dutch wife, a cool bolster that you draped yourself around to allow the flow of air. I finally fell asleep to the whine of the mosquitoes circling the net in frustration, like hungry flies around a meat safe.
    Like our Lord, it was only on the third day that I rose again for, the next morning, I awoke with a raging fever, a sharp throbbing in my head and my legs danced of their own volition. I staggered to the bathroom to heave drily for several hours. Shirtsleeved Dr Stove, irritated to be disturbed at breakfast, palpated indifferently as he chewed. A waiter stood beside him with bread and cheese on a plate.
    â€œStay in bed for two days, drink plenty of water, quinine every four hours, aspirin for the headache and to lower the fever.” He reached out blindly, wrapped bread around filling, popped it into his distended mouth and a thermometer into my own.
    â€œIs it malaria?”
    He shrugged and articulated through chewed bread. “With these symptoms, in Holland, I’d tell you to take codeine and aspirin for flu. Out here we say quinine and aspirin for malaria. We never really know what it is. But in both cases it works – usually – unless you die. But you won’t. You’re going to feel pretty drained for a while. Get out of this furnace. Go to the hills.” His own advice seemed to irritate him more, he who could not escape the heat of duty.
    â€œKintamani?”
    â€œThat’s a bit far. Up there you’d catch pneumonia and peg out, like as not. Somewhere like Ubud. There’s an old government resthouse there, a pasangrahan; I sometimes send the fever cases there. Bit tatty but do you I should think.” He looked at the plate hopefully, found it empty and shrugged again. The