nice little bookstores. I could feasibly spend my whole time here in Ubud doing what nicedivorced American women have been doing with their time ever since the invention of
the YWCA--signing up for one class after another: batik, drumming, jewelry-making,
pottery, traditional Indonesian dance and cooking . . . Right across the road from my
hotel there's even something called "The Meditation Shop"--a small storefront with a sign
advertising open meditation sessions every night from 6:00 to 7:00. May peace prevail on
earth, reads the sign. I'm all for it.
By the time I unpack my bags it's still early afternoon, so I decide to take myself for a
walk, get reoriented to this town I haven't seen in two years. And then I'll try to figure out
how to start finding my medicine man. I imagine this will be a difficult task, might take
days or even weeks. I'm not sure where to start with my search, so I stop at the front desk
on my way out and ask Mario if he can help me.
Mario is one of the guys who work at this hotel. I already made friends with him when I
checked in, largely on account of his name. Not too long ago I was traveling in a country
where many men were named Mario, but not one of them was a small, muscular,
energetic Balinese fellow wearing a silk sarong and a flower behind his ear. So I had to
ask, "Is your name really Mario? That doesn't sound very Indonesian."
"Not my real name," he said. "My real name is Nyoman."
Ah--I should have known. I should have known that I would have a 25 percent chance of
guessing Mario's real name. In Bali, if I may digress, there are only four names that the
majority of the population give to their children, regardless of whether the baby is a boy
or a girl. The names are Wayan (pronounced "Why-Ann"), Made ("mah-DAY"), Nyoman
and Ketut. Translated, these names mean simply First, Second, Third and Fourth, and
they connote birth order. If you have a fifth child, you start the name cycle all over again,
so that the fifth child is really known as something like: "Wayan to the Second Power."
And so forth. If you have twins, you name them in the order they came out. Because there
are basically only four names in Bali (higher-caste elites have their own selection of
names) it's totally possible (indeed, quite common) that two Wayans would marry each
other. And then their firstborn would be named, of course: Wayan.
This gives a slight indication of how important family is in Bali, and how important your
placement in that family is. You would think this system could become complicated, but
somehow the Balinese work it out. Understandably and necessarily, nicknaming is
popular. For instance, one of the most successful businesswomen in Ubud is a lady
named Wayan who has a busy restaurant called Cafe Wayan, and so she is known as
"Wayan Cafe"--meaning, "The Wayan who owns Cafe Wayan." Somebody else might be
known as "Fat Made," or "Nyoman-Rental-Car" or
"Stupid-Ketut-Who-Burned-Down-His-Uncle's-House." My new Balinese friend Mario
got around the problem by simply naming himself Mario.
"Why Mario?"
"Because I love everything Italian," he said.
When I told him that I'd recently spent four months in Italy, he found this fact so
stupendously amazing that he came out from behind his desk and said, "Come, sit, talk." I
came, I sat, we talked. And that's how we became friends.
So this afternoon I decide to start my search for my medicine man by asking my new
friend Mario if by any chance he knows a man by the name of Ketut Liyer.Mario frowns, thinking.
I wait for him to say something like, "Ah, yes! Ketut Liyer! Old medicine man who died
just last week--so sad when venerable old medicine man passes away . . ."
Mario asks me to repeat the name, and this time I write it down, assuming I'm
pronouncing something wrong. Sure enough, Mario brightens in recognition. "Ketut
Liyer!"
Now I wait for him to say something like, "Ah, yes! Ketut Liyer! Insane person! Arrested
last week for being a crazy man . . ."
But he says instead, "Ketut Liyer is famous healer."
"Yes! That's him!"
"I know him. I go in his house. Last week I take my cousin, she needs cure for her baby
crying all night. Ketut Liyer fixes it. One time I took American girl like you to Ketut
Liyer's house. Girl wanted magic to make her more beautiful to men. Ketut Liyer draw
magic painting, for help her be more beautiful. I tease her after that. Every day I tell her,
'Painting working! Look how beautiful you are! Painting working!' "
Remembering the image Ketut Liyer had drawn for me a few years ago, I tell Mario that
I'd gotten a magic picture myself from the medicine man once.
Mario laughs. "Painting working for you, too!"
"My picture was to help me find God," I explain.
"You don't want to be more beautiful to men?" he asks, understandably confused.
I say, "Hey, Mario--do you think you could take me to visit Ketut Liyer someday? If
you're not too busy?"
"Not now," he says.
Just as I'm starting to feel disappointed, he adds, "But maybe in five minutes?"
75757575
So this is how it comes to pass that--the very afternoon I have arrived in Bali--I'm
suddenly on the back of a motorbike, clutching my new friend Mario the
Italian-Indonesian, who is speeding me through the rice terraces toward Ketut Liyer's
home. For all that I've thought about this reunion with the medicine man over the last two
years, I actually have no idea what I'm going to say to him when I arrive. And of course
we don't have an appointment. So we show up unannounced. I recognize the sign outside
his door, same as last time, saying: "Ketut Liyer--painter." It's a typical, traditional
Balinese family compound. A high stone wall surrounds the entire property, there's a
courtyard in the middle and a temple in the back. Several generations live out their lives
together in the various interconnected small homes within these walls. We enter withoutknocking (no door, anyway) to the riotous dismay of a some typical Balinese watchdogs
(skinny, angry) and there in the courtyard is Ketut Liyer the elderly medicine man,
wearing his sarong and his golf shirt, looking precisely the same as he did two years ago
when I first met him. Mario says something to Ketut, and I'm not exactly fluent in
Balinese, but it sounds like a general introduction, something along the lines of, "Here's a
girl from America--go for it."
Ketut turns his mostly toothless smile upon me with the force of a compassionate fire
hose, and this is so reassuring: I had remembered correctly, he is extraordinary. His face
is a comprehensive encyclopedia of kindness. He shakes my hand with an excited and
powerful grip.
"I am very happy to meet you," he says.
He has no idea who I am.
"Come, come," he says, and I'm ushered to the porch of his little house, where woven
bamboo mats serve as furniture. It looks exactly as it did two years ago. We both sit
down. With no hesitation, he takes my palm in his hand--assuming that, like most of his
Western visitors, a palm-reading is what I've come for. He gives me a quick reading,
which I am reassured to see is an abridged version of exactly what he said to me last time.
(He may not remember my face, but my destiny, to his practiced eye, is unchanged.) His
English is better than I remembered, and also better than Mario's. Ketut speaks like the
wise old Chinamen in classic kung fu movies, a form of English you could call
"Grasshopperese," because you could insert the endearment "Grasshopper" into the
middle of any sentence and it sounds very wise. "Ah--you have very lucky good fortune,
Grasshopper . . ."
I wait for a pause in Ketut's predictions, then interrupt to remind him that I had been here
to see him already, two years ago.
He looks puzzled. "Not first time in Bali?"
"No, sir."
He thinks hard. "You girl from California?"
"No," I say, my spirits tumbling deeper. "I'm the girl from New York."
Ketut says to me (and I'm not sure what this has to do with anything), "I am not so
handsome anymore, lost many teeth. Maybe I will go to dentist someday, get new teeth.
But too afraid of dentist."
He opens his deforested mouth and shows me the damage. Indeed, he has lost most of his
teeth on the left side of his mouth and on the right side it's all broken, hurtful-looking
yellow stubs. He fell down, he tells me. That's how his teeth got knocked out.
I tell him I'm sorry to hear it, then try again, speaking slowly. "I don't think you
remember me, Ketut. I was here two years ago with an American Yoga teacher, a woman
who lived in Bali for many years."
He smiles, elated. "I know Ann Barros!"
"That's right. Ann Barros is the Yoga teacher's name. But I'm Liz. I came here asking for
your help once because I wanted to get closer to God. You drew me a magic picture."
He shrugs amiably, couldn't be less concerned. "Don't remember," he says.
This is such bad news it's almost funny. What am I going to do in Bali now? I don't know
exactly what I'd imagined it would be like to meet Ketut again, but I did hope we'd have
some sort of super-karmic tearful reunion. And while it's true I had feared he might be
dead, it hadn't occurred to me that--if he were still alive--he wouldn't remember me at all.Although now it seems the height of dumbness to have ever imagined that our first
meeting would have been as memorable for him as it was for me. Maybe I should have
planned this better, for real.
So I describe the picture he had made for me, the figure with the four legs ("so grounded
on earth") and the missing head ("not looking at the world through the intellect") and the
face in the heart ("looking at the world through the heart") and he listens to me politely,
with modest interest, like we're discussing somebody else's life entirely.
I hate to do this because I don't want to put him on the spot, but it's got to be said, so I
just lay it out there. I say, "You told me I should come back here to Bali. You told me to
stay here for three or four months. You said I could help you learn English and you
would teach me the things that you know." I don't like the way my voice sounds--just the
teensiest bit desperate. I don't mention anything about the invitation he'd once floated for
me to live with his family. That seems way out of line, given the circumstances.
He listens to me politely, smiling and shaking his head, like, Isn't it so funny the things
people say?
I almost drop it then. But I've come so far, I have to put forth one last effort. I say, "I'm
the book writer, Ketut. I'm the book writer from New York."
And for some reason that does it. Suddenly his face goes translucent with joy, turns
bright and pure and transparent. A Roman candle of recognition sparks to life in his mind.
"YOU!" he says. "YOU! I remember YOU!" He leans forward, takes my shoulders in his
hands and starts to shake me happily, the way a child shakes an unopened Christmas
present to try to guess what's inside. "You came back! You came BACK!"
"I came back! I came back!" I say.
"You, you, you!"
"Me, me, me!"
I'm all tearful now, but trying not to show it. The depth of my relief--it's hard to explain.
It takes even me by surprise. It's like this--it's like I was in a car accident, and my car
went over a bridge and sank to the bottom of a river and I'd somehow managed to free
myself from the sunken car by swimming through an open window and then I'd been
frog-kicking and struggling to swim all the way up to the daylight through the cold, green
water and I was almost out of oxygen and the arteries were bursting out of my neck and
my cheeks were puffed with my last breath and then--GASP!--I broke through to the
surface and took in huge gulps of air. And I survived. That gasp, that breaking
through--this is what it feels like when I hear the Indonesian medicine man say, "You
came back!" My relief is exactly that big.
I can't believe it worked.
"Yes, I came back," I say. "Of course I came back."
"I so happy!" he says. We're holding hands and he's wildly excited now. "I do not
remember you at first! So long ago we meet! You look different now! So different from
two years! Last time, you very sad-looking woman. Now--so happy! Like different
person!"
The idea of this--the idea of a person looking so different after a mere two years have
passed--seems to incite in him a shiver of giggles.
I give up trying to hide my tearfulness and just let it all spill over. "Yes, Ketut. I was very
sad before. But life is better now."
"Last time you in bad divorce. No good.""No good," I confirm.
"Last time you have too much worry, too much sorrow. Last time, you look like sad old
woman. Now you look like young girl. Last time you ugly! Now you pretty!"
Mario bursts into ecstatic applause and pronounces victoriously: "See? Painting
working!"
I say, "Do you still want me to help you with your English, Ketut?"
He tells me I can start helping him right now and hops up nimbly, gnome-like. He bounds
into his little house and comes back with a pile of letters he's received from abroad over
the last few years (so he does have an address!). He asks me to read the letters aloud to
him; he can understand English well, but can't read much. I'm his secretary already. I'm a
medicine man's secretary. This is fabulous. The letters are from art collectors overseas,
from people who have somehow managed to acquire his famous magic drawings and
