Chapter 4 Indonesian Story (3)

"Nice to meet you," he said. He doesn't know who I am. "Come on, come on," he said, and I was invited into the porch of his cottage, furnished with bamboo mats, exactly as it had been two years earlier.We both sit down.He took my palm without hesitation—presumably I read it like most Western visitors do.He took a quick look at my palm and I was relieved to find that it was the abbreviated version of what he told me last time. (He may not remember what I looked like, but my fate was unchanged to his practiced eyes.) His English was better than I remembered, and better than Mario's.Lai Yeh speaks like a wise old Chinese man in a classic Kung Fu movie, a sort of English that you might call "grasshopper" because you can insert the dear "grasshopper" into any sentence and it sounds very smart. "Ah--you're lucky, Grasshopper..."

I waited for Lai to stop prophesying, then interrupted him to let him know that I had been here to see him two years ago. He was puzzled. "Isn't this your first time in Bali?" "no." He racked his brains. "Are you a girl from California?" "No," I said despondently, "I'm a girl from New York." Lai said to me (I don't know how this has anything to do with it): "I'm no longer handsome, and I've lost a lot of teeth. Maybe someday I should go to the dentist and get new teeth. But I'm afraid of the dentist."

He opens his barren mouth to show its damage.Yes, most of the teeth on the left side of his mouth were missing, and the right side was completely chipped, looking like harmful yellow stumps.He said he fell and lost all his teeth. I told him how sad I was to learn about it, and then I tried again, speaking more slowly. "I don't think you remember me, Lai. I was here two years ago with an American yoga teacher who lived in Bali for many years." He smiles happily. "I know Ann Barros!" "That's right. Barros is the name of this yoga teacher. I'm Lily. I came to ask you for help because I wanted to get closer to God. You drew me a magic map."

He shrugged kindly and said casually, "I don't remember." The bad news is simply amusing.What should I do now in Bali?I'm not sure what the reunion with Lai is going to look like, but I do hope we'll have some kind of tears of joy reunion.Though I had feared that he might be dead, it never occurred to me that--if he had lived--he would not remember me at all.Though it seems foolish now to imagine that our first encounter was as memorable to him as it was to me.Perhaps I should have imagined the real situation. So I described the picture he had drawn me, with four legs ("steady on the ground"), headless ("can't see the world through the head"), and a face in the heart ("see the world with the heart") )image of.He listened to me politely, with just the right amount of interest, as if we were talking about other people's lives.

I don't like to do it because I don't want to embarrass him, but I have to say it, so I open it up.I said, "You told me I should come back to Bali. You told me I was going to be here for three or four months. You said I could help you learn English and you would teach me what you know." I I don't like my tone of despair.I did not mention that he had invited me to live with his family.Given the circumstances at hand, this seems too out of bounds. He listened politely, smiling and shaking his head, as if to say, "It's funny what people say". I almost give up.But I have come from afar and must make a last effort.I said, "Grandpa, I'm a writer who writes books. I'm a writer from New York."

For some reason, this worked.His face suddenly lit up with joy and became clear, pure and transparent.A radiance of recognition lit up in his heart. "You!" he said, "You! I remember you!" He leaned over, put his hands on my shoulders, and began to shake me happily, like a child shaking an unopened Christmas present trying to guess what's inside. "You're back! You're back!" "I'm back! I'm back!" I said. "you you you!" "Me, me, me!" Now I have teary eyes and try not to show it.The relief in me was indescribable, and even I was amazed.It was as if I had been in a car accident and the car fell off the bridge and sank to the bottom of the river, and I swam out of the sunken car with the window open and then, frog-style, trying to swim all the way through the cold green water to the light, I Almost out of oxygen, arteries bursting out of my neck, my cheeks swollen with my last breath, and then—a sharp breath—I crossed the surface, sucking in big gulps of air.I survived.Take a breath and get out - that's exactly what I felt when I heard the Indonesian pharmacist say "You're back!"I was just so relieved.