“All the Brazilians go there.”
“They must! There was one girl you know she wore this thin bikini that came right up her backside, like this.” He cuts through the air with his fingers drawing a coarse diagram.
“Not a thong, but very, very tiny. Very thin. Oh! She was in the water and I just watched her.”
“She was surfing?”
“Yes. But not serious, I think. She paddled out you know, and she talks with some of the guys, and then she paddles back in after thirty minutes.”
“Some of them do that.”
“Yes! So lovely. I just watch her in the water and I cannot surf myself because all the time I am just watching her. When she got out of the water I could catch waves again but not while she was there. Very distracting.”
The waves were bigger in the afternoon and the surf was crowded. Wild. A beach life, a scene from a Bennini movie. If there is any other place to be in this world then we may have gone there, but this must be the place because we find ourselves here with nothing to do but surf. And that is everything, and that is enough. Enough work for a lifetime, enough punishment to be good at something. The girls in the water inspire purpose. The sand on the beach is a melody.
Later, we walk down along the beach to Frederique’s café, but there is no one there except a young salty French man playing the guitar and a young local boy keeping a steady accompanying beat with a small pair of bongo drums. Frederique is behind the bar dancing and drinking red wine out of a plastic cup. The wine comes from a box that he keeps refrigerated. He welcomes us in then continues dancing. There are no girls. Raphael regrets walking down, but after dinner it is good to walk and it stretches out the body and reminds you briefly that there is more to the world.
Even in the early evening it feels very late. The days are long and wet.
We chat with Frederique about France and Spain and music. Frederique is freshly shaven but has few teeth left. A thin face and a tanned, gaunt body. Malnourished, sunburned, disowned, underappreciated, completely free and happy.
“You come tomorrow,” he says. We play chess. “There will be girls after all your silly waves.”
-Bali, 2012
