TURBINE | KAPOHAU

She had been there for only nine hours, and she was still alert. She counted the hours like beads on an abacus; one hour following the directions on her phone to the hostel; three hours dozing on a beanbag until check in; one hour horizontal in the dark; two hours prowling the streets, looking for authentic food and finding only an expensive mall sandwich; two hours reading her book, then checking her phone, her eyes glancing off the words, ricocheting with the conversations of brash Americans describing a ping pong ball show they’d been to the night before, their descriptions of women grotesque, unsettling.

Finally, now, she looked up to see Nina’s familiar smile, incongruous in this strange place.

*

Do you want to go to the temple across the river, or the palace? she asked Nina the next morning, checking the details against her guidebook. We can, uh, take the bus? And there’s a vegetarian restaurant nearby.

Nina wanted to go to the palace. It was hotter than they were used to, walls of shiny tiles radiating warmth. They were both wearing long-sleeved shirts, as the guidebook had instructed, with Nina in hiking pants with lots of pockets, and Meena wearing a flowing cotton skirt.

It was more beautiful than she’d expected, the perfect details of this old place, all taken care of for generations. She took another hot humid breath and surrendered to it, the anxiety of the lists and the budget lifting, the swelling crowd of tourists and devotees fading. For a moment, she felt the sunshine and the smooth weight of history, the smell of warm footpaths against damp skin.

When she opened her eyes, Nina was gone. Instant hot panic; but she was an adult now, and she let the panic run in one corner of her brain while she acted very calm and looked around, stroking down her body for the flatness of her passport and phone in a pouch under her shirt.

Nina was on the other side of the courtyard. At eye level, the line of pillars was inset with painted tiles. She looked where Nina had been looking; there was a gap in the mortar around the tile, which illustrated a princess dancing beside a river, limbs angled, old geometry.

*

I’m tired of cities, Nina said three days later, in their fourth hour on the bus – bright green out the window, contrasting with the deep pink of their dragonfruit smoothies. When presented with three options of beaches, she had chosen the most distant one – an island with resorts in the north, and party beaches for backpackers in the south. Something for everyone.

The cities are too big here, Nina continued. When I go home, once I finish university, I want to live on a farm.

It was dark when they got to the island, the smell of diesel from the ferry and the shared taxi clinging to them as they traipsed to a small, damp room. We’ll explore in the morning, said Nina, tucking herself into a sleeping sheet. It was too hot for Meena; she watched the fan spin shadows over the ceiling and tried to listen to the sea.

*

Everywhere on the island, the jungle pressed close; the land felt heavy with the proximity of greenery. It was cool in the morning, so she went running again; bought a papaya smoothie and coconut water for Nina, who was still curled up on the bed.

We’re going on a hike, she told Nina. I’ve read a blog about it. We need to get to a village six kilometres north and walk into the jungle.

Yes, said Nina, guzzling the coconut water gratefully. Nina didn’t look tired, a brass ring on her thumb shiny, her t-shirt somehow flattering rather than damp and crumpled. She tried not to compare Nina’s breezy glamour to the trousers and top she was wearing for the third day running, sticky with layers of sweat.

The blog had said that there was a waterfall after a few kilometres. Eventually the trees cleared and a gossamer ribbon spooled into a deep brown pool of water. The moment they got there, it started to rain.

Is this what rainy seasons are always like? Nina asked her, face streaming with water. She plucked off her glasses and untied her pale hair. Let’s go swimming, she said, her body already bare, her backpack tucked under a rock.

The rain was monsoonal, a different edge of the weather system than she was used to, a different time of year. Suddenly she was terribly homesick, desperate to be surrounded by trees she recognised, unable to copy Nina’s insouciant splashing. She was already soaked through, so she didn’t bother removing her clothing, instead stepped carefully over the rocks into the thrumming water.

Waterfalls are better than the sea, hypothesised Nina on the way back, but she suddenly stopped talking and backed away. Her friend edged around her to look. There was a snake coiled on the path ahead, virulent green, at least a metre long, its tongue flicking in and out of its mouth.

Again, that very calm and frozen feeling. The snake stretched across the width of the path; to avoid it they would have to step into the unknown of the dense undergrowth. If they jumped over it, they might fall in the mud, greasy with rain.

Snakes won’t attack people, usually, she told Nina. We don’t look like their prey.

Heartbeats like rain. Dense, rhythmless.

I’m going to jump over it, she said, and she leapt then kept running, until Nina caught up to her, both laughing with relief.

All your guidebooks couldn’t help with this, said Nina.

If you’d been bitten, they have numbers to call for antivenom, she replied, hating the prissiness in her voice.

*

You won’t regret going there, said David.

I’m excited! she said, and was surprised to find it was true. Are you excited, Nina?

Ah, two friends with matching names, said David, when Nina didn’t reply. He sounded out the syllables, the rhyme echoing into the greasy warm morning. This was the boring part of the city, the part the backpackers only came to if they wanted to get to somewhere else. It had been nice looking at the magnificent old temples for a few days, which was exactly how she’d described it to her parents, replies delayed by timezones.

This had been a wealthy place, once, rulers pouring money into buildings lasted. She was thinking about how infrastructure was a way for the past to communicate with the present: what would the makers of this bridge over the rail line think of her sandalled feet, her faded backpack?

David was her discovery in the hostel this morning. She had slid out of bed to drink tea and watch the sunrise while Nina slept, and found that a gangly white boy had done the same. He was travelling in the opposite direction to them, north to south, and he told her there was a town just off the main train line, close to tourist sites but quieter, dusty, just a few hundred thousand people doing their ordinary things. It only took up a paragraph in the guidebook, but it was worth stopping there.

David wanted to be free, he said; he had just finished his civil service, mandatory for Austrians, and had spent nine months cooped up in small airless offices, dreaming, apparently, of hot countries on the other side of the world. Was this flirting, she had wondered, asking him questions about his family. She thought about running a finger along his forearm, the short blonde hairs shining in the light. She booked the train and the guesthouse on the hostel computer, and woke Nina to walk to the station. Nina had seemed a little startled, even tetchy: did she not like it when she wasn’t the person being spontaneous?

*

You look like happy girls, said the hotel owner David had recommended, who offered a free shuttle service from the train station. He heaved up Nina’s bag and placed it in the tuk-tuk, the motor puffing. The hotel owner did most of the talking, requiring only an occasional murmur or oh really to propel him. Lonely, maybe, Meena thought.

He was British, but he had hated the grey of it. Came here and met his wife and the women here are more quiet, they don’t try to have opinions they don’t need. He liked running the hotel – only six bedrooms – he and his wife and baby and mother-in-law in the downstairs apartment. It was the hospitality here he’d liked, the friendliness. If he went back to Britain these days, to see his brother – well, there was something spiky about it, not the right kind of belonging. His child would have a better life here, as long as the odd backpacker kept flowing through. What were they going to do while they were there? He had so many recommendations.

I’d like some souvenirs, said Nina. I’m a bit of a collector.

A savvy look: he assessed her tan and phone full of the names of other white people she’d met on her travels. You want something different, he said to Nina. Something real. I can drop you off there tomorrow.

*

The afternoon was properly grey, the humidity like a forest. The hotel owner drove away on his motorbike. There was something compelling and despicable about the objects, Meena thought. Her parents had taken her into places like this as a child, but they’d often hurried out.

A glossy wooden door, intricate carving in the teak, patterns from this place she couldn’t belong to. It was cluttered, but not in a kitschy way. She felt, firmly, that like the stone palaces, this was a room full of old and real things.

I want this, said Nina, holding a piece of ivory, a paper price tag dangling from its base. It was a little chipped and stained, yes, but the shape of the figure was still clear, some tired gilding gleaming in crevices. Once, this had been something to worship.

Nina, she said, can you afford it? She knew Nina had a little more money than her, but they were still counting their cash each day, eating instant noodles if the hostel had a kettle.

I need something to take with me when I go home, said Nina.

Meena had been taking all the photos, asking Nina to pose with a coconut or pause on a staircase. What was Nina taking home with her? Was the sunshine and the rain, the tang of salty plum tea and cold noodles not going to be enough?

Nina, what’s in your backpack? she asked, something urgent in her words. A memory: her grandmother feeding her idli and telling her a story about a distant relative who had been an elephant keeper for a sahib who wanted to show off to the neighbours. How sad he’d been when they killed the elephant, the shard of tusk he’d kept, carved and polished but lost when the country split. Such a cliché, she’d thought at the time, but now it seemed salient.

Lots of things, said Nina. I’ll sell all the stuff I don’t want to an antique store when I get back. No-one here wants them, can’t you tell?

Meena watched quietly as her friend purchased the ivory Buddha and tucked it in her backpack. She watched her hungry eyes as they walked around the peasant museum and looked at objects that had once been a village’s greatest treasure, and now were lined up in a series of concrete rooms for foreigners to look at. Her friend wanted to take different things than her from this country. One more week, she told herself. Then she would go home, and her friend would go onwards, her peripatetic itinerary, Meena now understood, linked to trying to fit objects in her bag, recollection and burden and investment all at once. 

*

A hill above the last city. They followed the over-detailed instructions to hike to the temple, the hyperactive vlogger with her red hair filming every step. It had felt familiar even before they started.

Meena was grateful for the quiet of the jungle. A month with her friend and they had talked themselves into quietness, a tension lingering since the conversation in the antique shop.

On the map, the land was patched with rivers and forest, the city a bright bead at the centre, straddling the biggest river of them all. Her friend would leave tomorrow, but Meena knew that she liked the home she would return to, and she wasn’t sure if the same was true for the other. But it was their birthday, and there was a hill to climb.

Up and up. A pause to press peanuts from the 7-Eleven into their mouths. Birthday peanuts, Meena thought, remembering the threads of saffron in the biryani her dad had made to celebrate last year.

But she wouldn’t feel bereft; instead she thought about books she’d read, stories of people living long lives in other places. She could live in a cold country one day; in fact, she probably would. When she got home, she had scholarships to apply for. Tall brick buildings and marble statues, eating lunch on the sunlit grass then hurrying to a class. A less sweaty reality.

It started raining. Meena kept having to wait for her friend, who was pulling out her water bottle, tying her shoe – delay tactics from a tired person. Meena repeated shreds of the guidebook to herself – this hotel is a well-appointed option for the budget traveller, visitors to the area can’t miss walking across one of the bridges at sunset – and noticed how glossy the leaves were.

Now they were at the top, and the sun had come out. The gilded stupa reflected the warmth; unconsciously, Meena turned her damp body towards the heat.

When she looked around, she was alone. No panic this time. At the bottom of the steps, a man with a tray of small, carved stupas – tiny facsimiles of the monument above – was talking to her friend. Very cheap, he said, very good. Ma’am, your friends will love this.

Ah, it’s not very good, Nina replied. I want real things – something authentic.

Very authentic, he said. I make this myself! He saw Meena standing there, her dark skin, and started talking to her in his language, gesturing, eyes hoping for solidarity. She didn’t understand him, so she imagined it: listen, I don’t understand what this foreign woman wants.

The language of mutual incomprehension: rueful smile, reach forward, offer a small amount of cash for a tiny temple, and he walks away. Meena presented the object to her friend. Happy birthday, she said.

Happy birthday to you, too, came the reply, but Meena wasn’t given anything. Once the shared birthday had seemed like pleasing symmetry, but now Meena wasn’t sure that it meant anything.

*

It was fun, Meena said to Nina, who was waiting for the airport shuttle. Travel safe. All the right things, the things you were supposed to say – and not untrue.

The bus arrived. As it drove away, Meena could see her friend tying her hair into a bun. She already looked like a different person.

*

All day, Meena let the fear of losing her phone or her wallet or her passport play out quietly while reading books in cafes and eating lychees, each moment permeated by finality. She was about to be home again, the reprieve of this month over.

She had to get to the bus, and then the airport. She walked across the bridge, her footsteps heavy with the weight of the bag on her shoulder. It was nearly sunset: the light sliding orange across the sullen slow water.

A buzz from her phone, the object insistent. Hi, Amma, Meena said to her mother. Yes, the flight is on time. I’ll be back soon. She picked up her bags, bought a ticket, sat down on the grey vinyl. She was still listening to her faraway mother.

Yes, Ma, I’m glad I came, she said. I made the most of it.