The Cuckoo Colloquium

4 - Pinky Bell

That seemed to satisfy Nini, who began fingering Pinky Bell's short locks in a reciprocal gesture of affection, "I'm so jealous of your hair."

Suddenly a voice shrilled in the darkness. "You want tree?"

Pinky Bell jumped, and then tried to wiggle her way up into Nini's arms like a dog in its desperate escape from firecrackers. But it was just a young girl, standing off the trail with a stooped, elderly woman.

"You buy tree, you get sign. Only ten ringgit."

The girl pointed behind her. As if on some mysterious cue, the moonlight allowed Pinky Bell to gaze at dozens of little saplings, which stood in front of cross-pieced signs made of wood, like crucifixes for small dead things, each with the names of tourists who had come before her. Some of the signs listed sadly, or had lost their crosspieces, perhaps swept away during heavy rains.

The old woman crowed in her strange language, and the child then said, "It a memorial. You want tree?"

Pinky Bell pondered the word memorial ... The only time she could remember visiting a memorial was when her father had taken her to Pearl Harbor on Oahu Island. But that was a bunch of men who had died in a boat called The Arizona. Pinky Bell preferred that evening's Fire Dance a lot more than thinking about a bunch of dead men.

The old woman spoke at length and the girl translated, "This is bad place. We are slaves. You not slaves."

Pinky Bell noticed movement next to the old woman, a baby orangutan on a leash. It was light-colored, collared and chained, and the poor thing looked up with its huge, heartbreaking eyes ...

Pinky Bell flopped like some creature speared through the craw. Her sense of decency took a real hit when people went to such low depths as to chain up animals, especially the cute ones, and she fell into a quiet melancholy.

Then something else strange happened-a sudden gust shook the trees, and there was a soft boom from somewhere in the night.

The little girl gave a knowing grin. "Durian fruits, they falling from the tree when the wind, it blow."

Pinky Bell nodded, though she didn't really understand. Not then. But she would later.

"Durian even heavier than coconut. You don't want to be under when it fall, or you hurt bad..."

Nini cocked her head and snickered. "We're in a colloquium, the Cuckoo Colloquium. We're leaving tomorrow."

The child translated, and the woman considered the words, then sighed and looked away like she knew something the tourists didn't.

The girl tried again: "You want tree? You get sign. It a good memorial, and only ten ringgit."

Nini said they'd think about it, and walked on with Pinky Bell right behind her as if attached by a cord. They passed the boys' hut, where the old Australian slept, along with the European boy, Puso, and that American boy, Windy, who called her a toy doll and farted in the minivan.

Pinky Bell turned back to see if the woman and the girl were following or not, and all she saw were the dark ripples of the little signs. Where had they gone? The woman and the girl had vanished like they'd never been there in the first place.

They forked left past the stink-hole and the darkened visitor's lodge, where they had dinner. Next to an unruly garden and a small copse of palms crouched the ominous shape of the toilet shack ... It was either that or a monster waiting to spring out at, and then consume, two vulnerable tourists in their nighties.