953–68

Mao Tse-tung provided Allan and Herbert with false British passports. Their journey took them by aeroplane from Shenyang, via Shanghai, Hong Kong and Malaysia. Soon, the former Gulag-escapees were sitting under a parasol on a white beach just a few metres from the Indian Ocean.

It would all have been perfect if only the well-meaning waitress didn’t constantly get everything wrong. Whatever Allan and Herbert ordered to drink, they got something different — if they got anything at all, sometimes the waitress lost her way altogether on the beach. The last straw for Allan was when he ordered a vodka and Coca-Cola (‘a bit more vodka than cola’) and got – Pisang Ambon, a vibrantly green banana liquor.

‘Enough is enough,’ said Allan and was going to complain to the hotel manager and ask for a new waitress.

‘Over my dead body!’ said Herbert. ‘She is absolutely charming!’

The waitress was called Ni Wayan Laksmi; she was thirty-two years old and should have been married off long ago. She looked nice, but wasn’t from a fine family, didn’t have any money, and on top of that it was known that she was about as intelligent as a kodok, Balinese for frog. So Ni Wayan Laksmi had been left over when boys chose girls and girls chose boys on the island (in so far as they had a choice).

It hadn’t really bothered her very much, because she had always felt rather uncomfortable in male company, and in female company, in any company at all, in fact. Up until now! There was something really special about one of the two new white men at the hotel. His name was Herbert and it was as if… they had something in common. He must be at least thirty years older than her, but she didn’t think that mattered, because she was… in love! And her feelings were reciprocated. Herbert had never before met anybody who was anywhere near as slow-witted as he himself was.

When Ni Wayan Laksmi turned fifteen, her father had given her a language book, the idea being that his daughter would use it to learn Dutch, because Indonesia was at that time a Dutch colony. After four years of struggle with the book, a Dutchman came to visit. Ni Wayan Laksmi dared for the first time to try out the Dutch that had been so difficult to learn, and was told that what she was speaking was German. Her father, who wasn’t terribly bright himself, had given her the wrong book.

Now, thirteen years later, that unfortunate circumstance had unexpectedly useful results, because Ni Wayan Laksmi and Herbert could speak to each other and declare their love.

Next Herbert asked for half of the pile of dollars that Mao Tse-tung had given to Allan, after which he sought out Ni Wayan Laksmi’s father and asked for the hand of his eldest daughter. Her father thought he was being made fun of. Here was a foreigner, a white man with his pockets full of money, who was asking for the hand of by far the most stupid of his daughters. The fact that he even knocked on the door was a sensation. Ni Wayan Laksmi’s family belonged to the Sudra caste, the lowest of the four castes on Bali.

‘Are you sure this is the right house?’ asked the father. ‘And is it my eldest daughter you mean?’

Herbert Einstein replied that although he usually muddled things up, on this particular occasion he was quite certain he was right.

Two weeks later, they were married, after Herbert had converted to… some religion the name of which he had forgotten. But it was quite a fun one, with elephant heads and that sort of thing.

Over this period Herbert had tried to learn the name of his new wife, but in the end he gave up.

‘Darling,’ he said. ‘I can’t remember your name. Would you be very sorry if I call you Amanda instead?’

‘Not at all, dear Herbert. Amanda sounds nice. But why Amanda?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Herbert. ‘Do you have a better idea?’

Ni Wayan Laksmi didn’t, so from that moment on she was Amanda Einstein.

Herbert and Amanda bought a house in the village of Sanur, not far from the hotel and beach where Allan spent his days. Amanda stopped waitressing; she thought it was just as well to give her notice – she would be fired some day anyway because she never did anything right. Now they just had to decide what to do for the future.

Just like Herbert, Amanda muddled everything up that could be muddled up. Left became right, up became down, here became there… So she never had any education. The very least it demanded was that you could regularly find your way to school.

But now Amanda and Herbert had an awful lot of dollars and so everything would certainly sort itself out. Amanda was admittedly terribly unintelligent, she explained to her husband, but she wasn’t stupid!

And then she told Herbert that in Indonesia everything was for sale, and so anyone who had money could get anything he wanted. Herbert didn’t really understand what his wife meant, and Amanda knew what it was like not being able to understand, so instead of explaining it further, she said:

‘Dear Herbert, tell me something that you would like for yourself.’

‘Do you mean… like being able to drive a car?’

‘Yes, exactly!’ said Amanda.

And then she excused herself, she had some things to do. But she would be back before the evening meal.

Three hours later, she was home again. She had with her a newly issued driver’s licence in Herbert’s name. But that wasn’t all. She also had a diploma that showed that Herbert was a certified driving instructor and a receipt showing that she had just bought the local driving school and given it a new name: Einstein’s School for Driving.

This was all fantastic, Herbert thought, but… it didn’t make him a better driver, did it? Well, yes, in a way it did, Amanda explained. Now he had a position. Now he would decide what was good driving and what wasn’t. Life worked in such a way that right was not necessarily right, but rather what the person in charge said was right.

Herbert’s face lit up: he got it!

Einstein’s School for Driving soon became a successful company. Almost everyone on the island in need of a driver’s licence wanted to be taught by the nice white man. And Herbert rapidly grew in this role. He gave all the theory lessons himself, and in a friendly yet authoritative manner explained that it was important not to drive too fast because then you might crash. And you shouldn’t drive too slowly either, because then you obstructed traffic. The teacher seemed to know what he was talking about.

After six months, the island’s two other driving schools closed for lack of customers, and now Herbert had a monopoly. He told Allan about this during one of his weekly visits to the beach.

‘I’m proud of you, Herbert,’ said Allan. ‘That you of all people got involved in driving instruction! And here where they drive on the left…’

‘Drive on the left?’ said Herbert. ‘Do they drive on the left in Indonesia?’

Amanda had been busy too. First, she had acquired a proper education, and now she had a degree in economics. It had taken a few weeks and had cost quite a lot, but in the end she had the certificate in her hand. Top grades too, from one of the better universities in Java.

And with a university degree behind her, she had gone for a long walk along the beach at Kuta and thought hard. What could she do here in life that would bring good fortune to her family? Even with her degree in economics it was still rather hard to count. But perhaps she should… could she possibly? Yes, I’ll damn well do it, Amanda Einstein thought.

‘I’ll go into politics!’

Amanda Einstein founded the Liberal Democratic Freedom Party (she thought the three words liberal, democracy and freedom sounded good together). She immediately had 6,000 imaginary members all of whom thought she should stand for election as governor in the autumn. The sitting governor would be standing down for reasons of age, and before Amanda had her idea there was only one likely candidate to take over. Now there were two. One of them was a man of the Pedana caste, the other was a woman of the Sudra caste. The result of the election was preordained, to Amanda’s disadvantage. If it wasn’t for the fact that she had a pile of dollars.

Herbert had nothing against his beloved going into politics, but he knew that Allan disliked politics in general and after his years in the Gulag disliked communism in particular.

‘Are we going to become communists?’ he asked uneasily.

No, Amanda didn’t think they would. That word wasn’t in the party name. But if Herbert really wanted to become communist, they could probably add it.

‘The Liberal Democratic Communist Freedom Party,’ said Amanda and felt how the name rolled off her tongue. A bit long perhaps, but it could work.

But that wasn’t what Herbert meant. Quite the opposite, he thought. The less their party could devote itself to politics, the better.

They discussed how to finance their campaign. According to Amanda, they wouldn’t have a lot of dollars left when the campaign was over, because it was expensive to win. What did Herbert think?

Herbert replied that he was certain that Amanda was the one in the family who best understood that matter. There wasn’t much competition, admittedly.

‘Great,’ said Amanda. ‘Then we’ll use one third of our capital for my election campaign, one third for bribes for the heads of the election districts, one third for muddying the reputation of the main opponent, and then we’ll keep one third to live on if things don’t work out. What do you think?’

Herbert scratched his nose and didn’t think anything at all. But he did tell Allan about Amanda’s plans and Allan sighed at the thought that somebody who couldn’t distinguish between banana liquor and vodka now believed she could become governor. But so what, they had started off with a bundle of dollars from Mao Tse-tung, and there was more than enough left of Allan’s half. So he promised Herbert and Amanda that he would give them some more after the election. But after that he didn’t want to hear of any more projects concerning things that Herbert and Amanda didn’t understand.

Herbert thanked him for the offer. Allan was a very kind man, that much was clear.

However, Allan’s help was not needed. The governor’s election was a complete success for Amanda. She won with more than eighty per cent of the votes, and her opponent got twenty-two per cent. The opponent thought that the total of more than one hundred per cent indicated the election wasn’t fair, but the court soon dismissed his complaint and threatened him with serious consequences if he continued to defame the governor-elect, Mrs Einstein. Just before the court announcement, Amanda had happened to meet the court’s chairman for a cup of tea.

While Amanda Einstein slowly but surely took over the island, and her husband Herbert taught people to drive (without sitting behind the wheel himself more than absolutely necessary), Allan sat in his lounge chair beside the sea with a suitable drink in his hand. Since Amanda had given up waitressing, he now (most of the time) got served exactly what he asked for.

Apart from sitting where he sat and drinking what he drank, Allan thumbed through the international newspapers he had ordered, ate when he got hungry, and had a nap in his room when his head felt too fuzzy.

Days became weeks, weeks became months, months became years – and Allan never tired of being on holiday. And after fifteen years he still had a lot of dollars left. That was partly because there had been a pile of dollars to start with, but also because Amanda and Herbert Einstein had for some time owned the hotel he was staying in, and they immediately made Allan the only non-paying guest.

Allan was now sixty-three years old and still didn’t move around more than necessary, while Amanda went from strength to strength in her political career. She was popular with the masses, as could be seen from the regular opinion polls carried out by the local Statistics Institute owned and run by one of her sisters. Besides, Bali was ranked by the human rights organisations as the least corrupt region in the country. That, in turn, was because Amanda had bribed the entire investigating committee.

Nevertheless, the campaign against corruption was one of the three things that characterized Amanda’s work as governor. She even introduced anti-corruption lessons in all of Bali’s schools. One headmaster in Denpasar had first protested – in his opinion the whole thing could have the opposite effect. But then Amanda made him chairman of the school board instead, with twice as big a salary, and that took care of him.

The second thing was Amanda’s struggle against communism. Before the election she had organized the banning of the local communist party, which was on the way to becoming too big for her own good. This helped her get through the election with a much smaller budget than she would otherwise have needed.

The third thing that contributed to Amanda’s success was Herbert and Allan. Through them, she discovered that it was by no means 30°C all year round in large parts of the rest of the world. In what they called Europe it was particularly chilly, and most of all in the far north where Allan came from. So she stimulated the development of tourism by granting building permission for luxury hotels on land she had just bought herself.

Otherwise, she looked after her nearest and dearest as best she could. Father, mother, sisters, uncles, aunts and cousins soon all had central and lucrative positions in Balinese society. This led to Amanda being re-elected as governor no less than twice. The second time, the number of votes and voters even tallied.

Over the years, Amanda had also given birth to two sons: first Allan Einstein (Herbert had Allan to thank for almost everything), followed by Mao Einstein (in honour of that useful pile of dollars).

But one day everything fell apart. It started when Gunung Agung, the 3,000 metre high volcano erupted. The immediate consequence for Allan, seventy kilometres away, was that the smoke blocked the sun. For others, it was worse. Thousands of people died, and even more had to flee from the island. Bali’s hitherto popular governor didn’t make any decisions worth the name. She didn’t even realise she had a number of decisions to make.

The volcano gradually calmed down, but the island was still erupting politically and economically – just like the rest of the country. In Jakarta, Suharto took over after Sukarno, and the new leader was certainly not going to be soft on various political deviations like his predecessor. Above all, Suharto had been hunting down communists, presumed communists, suspected communists, possible communists, highly unlikely communists, and the odd innocent person. Soon, somewhere between 200,000 and 300,000 people had died; the figures were uncertain, because a lot of ethnic Chinese had simply been branded as communists and shipped out of Indonesia, and they had to disembark in China where they were treated as capitalists.

When the smoke had cleared, not a single one of Indonesia’s 200 million inhabitants still professed communist ideas (to be on the safe side, it had been declared a crime). Mission was accomplished for Suharto, who now invited the USA and others in the West to share the nation’s riches. This in turn got the wheels of the economy turning, people fared better, and best of all Suharto himself soon became almost unbelievably rich. Not bad for a soldier who started his military career smuggling sugar.

Amanda Einstein no longer thought it was fun being governor. As many as 80,000 Balinese had lost their lives to the Jakarta government’s efforts to make them think correctly.

Amidst the mess, Herbert retired and Amanda was considering doing the same even though she wasn’t yet fifty. The family owned land and hotels after all, and that pile of dollars that had made the family’s prosperity possible had now been transformed into a lot more dollars. It would be just as well to retire, but what should she do instead?

‘What about becoming Indonesia’s ambassador in Paris?’ Suharto asked her straight off after first having introduced himself on the phone.

Suharto had noticed Amanda Einstein’s work on Bali and her resolute decision to ban the local communists. Besides, he wanted a balance between the sexes when it came to top jobs in the embassies (the balance would be 24 — 1 if Amanda took the job).

‘Paris?’ Amanda Einstein answered. ‘Where’s that?’

At first, Allan thought that the 1963 volcanic eruption was an act of providence telling him it was time to move on. But when the sun popped out again from behind the disappearing volcanic smoke, most things returned to what they had been like before (except, for some reason, there seemed to be a civil war in the streets). So Allan remained in his beach chair for a few more years.

And it was thanks to Herbert that he did eventually pack up and move on. One day, Herbert announced that he and Amanda were going to move to Paris and if Allan wanted to come with them then his friend would arrange a false Indonesian passport instead of the false (and out-of-date) British one that Allan had last used. Besides, the ambassador-to-be would see to it that Allan had a job at the embassy, not so much so that Allan would have to work but because the French could be a bit difficult about whom they let into the country.

Allan accepted the offer. He had had plenty of rest. Besides, Paris sounded like a calm and stable corner of the world, without the riots that had recently raged in Bali, even around Allan’s hotel.

They would leave in two weeks. Amanda started her job at the embassy on 1st May.

It was 1968.