Chapter 38 Indonesian Stories(37)

"It makes me feel awkward when you talk about it," she said, fanning herself, "these conversations make me feel... strange, even in my underwear! You two go home. Don't Let's talk about sex again. Go home, go to bed, but sleep, okay? Sleep!" On the way home, Felipe asked me, "Did she buy a house?" "Not yet. She said she's still looking." "It's been over a month since you gave her the money, hasn't it?" "Yes, but the land she wants isn't for sale." "Be careful, sweetheart," said Felipe, "don't let this drag on for too long. Don't let the whole situation become a 'Bali' trouble."

"What's the meaning?" "I don't want to interfere with your business, but I've been in this country for five years and know what's going on here. Things can get complicated. Sometimes it's hard to get to the bottom of things." "Felipe, what do you want to say?" I asked, and seeing that he didn't answer me right away, I quoted a famous line he himself said: "If you can tell me slowly, I will understand quickly." "What I want to say is, Xiaoli, your relatives and friends have raised a sum of money for this woman, and now the money is in the bank of the eldest sister. Make sure that she really bought the house."

The end of July came and so did my thirty-fifth birthday.The eldest sister held a birthday party for me in her store, which was completely different from my previous birthday experience.My sister put me in a traditional Balinese birthday dress - a bright purple sarong skirt, a strapless bodice and a long golden cloth that wrapped me tightly, forming a tight protective film that almost made me breathless, Can't even eat my own birthday cake.She tucked me into this exquisite costume in her small, dark bedroom, stuffed with all the belongings of the three children she shared with her, pinning these folded gorgeous fabrics to my chest, Ask me casually: "Have you thought about marrying Felipe?"

"No idea," I said, "we're not planning to get married. I don't want to marry again, sister. I don't think Felipe wants to marry again. But I like being with him." "External decency is easy to find, but it's not easy to be outwardly presentable and inwardly presentable. Felipe was an example." I agree. She smiled and said, "Little Li, who brought you this good man? Who prayed every day for you to find him?" I kissed her: "Thank you big sister. You did a perfect job." We got up for the birthday party.Big Sister and the children decorated the whole place with balloons and palm leaves, and handwritten signs with intricate lingua francas such as: "Happy Birthday to you, dear dear sister, our beloved Lady Elizabeth, Happy birthday to you, peace forever, happy birthday." My eldest sister's nephews and nieces are born dancers, they dance in temple fairs, so they all come to the restaurant to dance for me; to the priests.Each child wears a large golden headdress, with coquettish heavy makeup on his face, strong feet and delicate gestures.

Parties in Bali are generally organized around one principle: everyone dresses up, sits nearby, and looks at each other.It's actually a lot like a New York fashion party. ("God, sweetheart," Felipe moans when I mention that my sister is throwing a Balinese birthday party for me. "It's going to be a boring party...") And yet it wasn't boring—just Quiet, just different.First the whole dressing up part, then the whole dancing part, then the whole sitting around looking at each other, which wasn't too bad.Everyone looks beautiful.The whole family of the eldest sister came, they kept smiling and waving at me from a meter away, and I kept smiling and waving at them.

I blew out the candles on the birthday cake with the youngest orphan, Little Four; I decided a few weeks ago that from now on, she would have her birthday on the eighteenth of July as well, because she never had one before. birthday or birthday party.After we blew out the candles, Felipe gave the fourth child a Barbie doll. She opened the gift in surprise and treated it as a spaceship ticket to Jupiter-this is a gift she could never have imagined she would receive . Everything about this party is a little weird.There was a strange mix of friends of various nationalities and ages, even the eldest sister's family members and several of her Western clients and patients whom I had never met.My friend Yudhi brought a half dozen beers to wish me a happy birthday, and a Los Angeles screenwriter named Adam came.Felipe and I met Adam one night at a bar and invited him over.Adam and Yudhi are at a party talking to a young boy named John; the boy's mother, the older sister's patient, is a German fashion designer married to an American living in Bali.Little Johann—seven-year-old says he's American because his dad is American, even though he's never been to America, yet he speaks German to his mother and Bahasa Indonesia to his older sister's children— Got a lot of admiration for Adam because he found out this guy is from California and he surfs.