This is the last piece in a four part series on the wonderful women I have met in Amed.
“Love may do the cruelest things
May bruise those angel wings
But angel, love will find someone for you”
- Jimmy Nail, Angel
Erica had come to Bali in search of love. She was a fifty eight year old fading Theatre and TV star from a European country. A divorcee for the last three years she yearned to feel the touch of a man and to hear his gruff voice in bed when the lights were turned out. This is what she told me when I first met her in a warung on Lipah beach. Actually these were not the exact words but it was something to this effect.
Earlier in the evening, I had entered the warung along with my friend Vanessa, loudly arguing with her about the year when Dadaism (an avant-garde art form) started in Germany. I insisted it was the 1950s while my friend said it was post World War I, around the early 1920s. Erica walked up to our table and announced that Vanessa was indeed correct and I was wrong. We then struck up a conversation that swung like an erratic pendulum. Topics like the killings of the Israeli Olympic team members in Munich, the Wall, Martin Luther and finally to the fact that Adolph Hitler was not German but Austrian.
It was surreal. Here we were an American (Vanessa), German (Erica) and an Indian sitting in a small warung drinking Bali Kofi with fisher folk as spectators discussing events that had occurred decades before.
After a few cups of coffee we switched to Arak and then the verbosity subsided. Erica declared in the ensuing moments that she expected to find love in Bali.
“I have been alone for the last three years ever since my husband left me for a younger women. She was four years younger to me. But he loved her. He stopped loving me. I cannot understand why? We were married for over thirty years. He is a poet and writer. I suppose one can un love a person and then begin to love another all in one breath,” she said with a sigh.
Much to Erica’s annoyance, I burst out laughing.
“What’s so funny?” she asked
“Love between man and woman does not exist. For if it did how could we un love a person?” I replied.
“You are a cynic, you know. Even though I am divorced after a thirty-year marriage I still believe love exists in the realms of a truthful partnership,” she said.
“Okay, then explain your husband’s behaviour? Didn’t he profess his love for you on many a night while you both lay in bed?” I asked.
“Yes, but then feelings change. I still love him and he probably loves me in his own way,” she said defiantly.
“That’s convenient!” I replied and quickly apologised for my abruptness.
We left the warung at twilight and walked to our small hotel.
Later that night we met at a café for dinner. The live band and the young crowd added spice to the evening. It was not till the wee hours of the morning did the crowd disperse into the dark, leaving just the two of us with lots of empty bottles and glasses lying scattered on the tables.
Erica stood up and began reciting her part as Maria in Shakespeare’s “As you like it”.
She was incoherent, as the Arak she had drunk had scrambled her brain. I gently led her to a chair. Erica sat down and began to cry.
“I have come to Bali to look for love. How foolish of me. Look at me – I am old who will love me? I am living an illusion just like the characters I play on stage. I seem to be living other people’s lives. The only reality I see are the Balinese I meet. They have open faces, loving eyes and a rhythm of life that I have never experienced before,” she said
“That’s rubbish. You are a handsome, successful and wealthy woman who can travel the world without a care. I think you have not got over your divorce – the betrayal and the fact that your ex husband now lies in the arms of another woman who as you had told me earlier was your girlfriend. They both deceived you,” I said.
“What are you really looking for in Bali?”
“I came here a month ago on a whim as a friend told me in Cologne that Bali offered companionship to lonely women like me. I thought I’d find myself a young husband, buy a house and settle down to a quiet life. But now I am beginning to have second thoughts and you know why? When I spent a few days in Ubud I would walk through the rice fields every morning and watch the farmers tirelessly tending to their crops. It was then that I began to appreciate the plate of rice that was placed before me with every meal… I suppose the spirits are telling me that love and beauty are two sides of a coin. I think I should be grateful for everything I have and not demand another helping of personal gratification. I think I will die in Bali,” she said with finality.
“Rubbish and why do you say this?” I asked.
“Because when I was in Ubud I visited a Tarot card reader who asked me to pull two cards from her deck. I did and out came the cards that signified the Devil and Death,” she replied.
“You came for love but have found beauty and a premonition of death. I suppose you also have vivid dreams in Bali?” I asked.
“Yes, how do you know? I dream a lot of my childhood days in Bavaria. I think the natural beauty and the vibrant religious culture in Bali seems to ignite my mind,” she exclaimed adding, “Everyday I witness women making delicate floral offerings that are placed everywhere as thanksgiving to the gods. I find this fascinating and yet so laborious. I suppose this is also a form of love. Love for one’s gods,” she said.
I gently held her hand and told her to forget looking for a replacement for her husband or for that matter even love because she had already found it in the sylvan landscape and religious offerings – a life of beauty and serenity. She didn’t answer me and instead pulled her hand away and walked out of the deserted warung.
I never saw her again.
A few weeks later I received a telephone call from Erica.
“Mark, how are you? This is Erica? I am sorry I left like that but it was too much for me. I am in Berlin preparing for my next role in a television series. I understand now that I was a fool living in paradise (Bali) because the island showed me my reflection in the rice fields and I didn’t recognise it. In the Balinese way of life I saw the devotion to their gods and nature and for me this was greater than the love I was searching for. Yes I have found love and it’s within me. I shall stop living other people’s lives and live my own, for I have begun to love myself,” she said and put down the phone.
Om Shanti Shanti Shanti Om
