It is in the nature of small children everywhere to splash each other whenever they get into water. There are two young brown-skinned girls doing just that in the pool outside my room, giggling and shrieking with glee. Their language might be foreign to me but there is no mistaking the happiness that they feel at being young and free and frolicking in a swimming pool in the glorious sunshine of an after-school afternoon. The sun is so hot that the water felt cold at first when I immersed myself in it an hour ago to do my regulation sixteen laps. I am not much of a swimmer but feel that for the sake of my ageing body I must endeavour at least this every day that I am in Ubud, Bali.

People all tell me that I don’t look my sixty-six years, more like fifty-six. This is all very well but I don’t feel a day over, say, thirty or maybe even twenty-six. That is until I try to lift a crated stone-carved Ganesha onto the back of a truck, ready for transport to the warehouse and from thence by ship to Adelaide in South Australia. Then, luckily, fit young Balinese men in shorts and singlets will wave me aside, in respect of my silver hair, and with the ease and grace that seems innate in their people, will load it on for me.

I am on my yearly buying spree. I travel the workshops and antique emporiums of the island in search of pieces that I think will please my commissioners back home. It is an occupation that I have followed for a number of years. It is not supremely profitable but it pays for my yearly sojourn on the island that I have come to love so much that I feel it to be a second home. It covers the trip with a little bit more besides. Since the death of my beloved wife some ten years ago I have not needed much, the upkeep on our modest little workman’s cottage in Port Adelaide was always minimal, two or three times a week I am able to catch my own supper from the Largs Bay jetty and I have a flourishing vegetable garden out the back. The only luxuries I allow myself being the occasional symphony concert and decent bottles of red wine, which can often be had for less than twenty dollars. Now and again, if I have discovered on my travels an exquisite Chinese bowl for example, for which I know just the right avid collector who will be more than happy to pay a premium for it, I might splash out and treat myself to a really fine vintage. Living in one of the premier wine producing regions of the world really does have its advantages.

This year I am staying in a losmen in Tebesaya, having finally given up on quartering myself closer to the centre of town. The traffic in the main streets has driven me further east. Over the years the number of motor scooters has increased exponentially with the increasing wealth generated by tourism, until it seems that every child over the age of thirteen possesses one. They are legally entitled to drive one from the age of ten. This in itself isn’t so bad, if you can ignore the noise, but now there seem to be more and more cars in the streets and the infrastructure is not coping well. The roads are no wider now than when they were merely dirt tracks during the times of the Dutch, suited to pony traps and the odd bullock cart. The Indonesians have asphalted them over but there is little that can be done to widen them short of some serious demolition. This the government must be aware could well spark civil disobedience. No one wants a return to the bloodletting of the sixties.

So I am staying in a pleasant little losmen just off the rather grubby but relatively quiet Jalan Sukma, unpolluted as yet by tourist shops. There are five small cottages with carved and painted doors and windows around a small flourishing garden bursting with crotons, hibiscus and many other shrubs and flowering plants for which I have no names, the whole presided over by mature frangipani trees offering up a plethora of flowers saluting the sun with trumpets in the mornings, and scenting my room delightfully in the evenings.

In the middle of this mini-paradise lies the pool, the whole being under the protection of the benign stone Ganesha who sits at one end with his trunk rootling about in the bowl of sweetmeats that he holds to one side of his comfortably fat belly. Should anyone doubt his power however, his two upraised rear arms brandish weapons while the fingers of his fourth hand are shaped into a mudra for meditation. His elephant head is frequently garlanded with strings of luminous orange-yellow marigold blossoms by the womenfolk of the family, and colourful offerings and small piles of rice are daily to be seen at his feet in little woven baskets. Similar offerings are left in the family shrine in the raised area behind us, the side closest to Mount Agung. After the Gods have enjoyed the spiritual essence of these foods the spotted necked doves, the bulbuls, the little white breasted munias and other grain eating birds are free to enjoy the remaining gross manifestations. We are daily visited by a plethora of butterflies, the little white eye-spotted ones and the chrome yellow dancing jewels, as well as multi-coloured ones the size of small birds and the occasional iridescent turquoise dream.

From this idyllic spot it is easier for my driver to transport me south to the craft villages of Mas, Celuk, Blatubulan and the markets of Sukawati; east to Klungkung and Kamasan for paintings; or north over Mount Batur and on towards Singaraja on my treasure hunting expeditions, without being embroiled in the traffic jams that are now a daily occurrence in ‘downtown’ Ubud.

The other morning when Wayan was escorting his little sister Ketut through the garden on his way to what I thought was his daily scooterised school run I remarked on how smart she looked. Although only six years old she had all the appearance of a proper little Balinese young woman in her green sarong, purple lace over-tunic cinched in by a scarlet sash and with her black hair held together by a scarlet scrunchy before falling the full length of her back.

“Oh no,” said Wayan, “not sekolah. She’s going to the temple, taking offerings for Saraswati.”

“Is it Saraswati’s day today?” I enquired, “I thought it was next week. Maybe I should get a priest to come and bless my books,” I joked and smiled as I shrugged my shoulders in what I hoped was an apologetic fashion.

Saraswati is the goddess of speech and learning, of knowledge and the arts. The wife of Brahma, she is portrayed riding a white goose or sometimes a peacock, carrying a musical instrument - the Vina – a lontar palm book, a lotus flower and possibly a rosary in her four hands. On her sometimes twice yearly anniversary, the traditional Balinese calendar consisting of only two hundred and ten days, there is much ceremonial activity not only at the temples but in each family compound. All of the household’s books are removed and placed in the family shrines and special offerings placed with them, encouraging her to come down from Heaven and bless them. It is the supreme manifestation of the utmost regard that art of all kinds is held in this culture, it is part of what makes Bali and the Balinese the special place and people that they are; surely amongst the most civilised of people in the world.

On his return Wayan approached me and said that if I wished he could take my books and place them with theirs in the shrine overnight. Then they would get the benefit of the prayers offered up by the old woman, his auntie, who lives in the small room behind the garage. I always travel with books. There is nothing more pleasant after a hard day’s excursion than to sit on the veranda in the cool of the evening, a small glass of Beer Bintang at my elbow and a classic of world literature on my knees. Although I had spoken in jest I accepted his offer with alacrity, handing over the two volume Penguin edition of The Brothers Karamazov which I had intended to read for the second time this trip, a collection of Maupassant’s short stories, and a collected edition of Katherine Mansfield’s. I reserved the Minette Walters for my evening read as I was already half way through it.

I met Ms. Walters once at a Writers’ Week and don’t feel that she would be too offended by this. She writes extremely well but is hardly on the level of Dostoyevsky. Possibly of Maupassant of course, although it is hard to judge when you can only read in translation. Will she still be read in a century and a half’s time I wonder? On one of those electronic gadgets that are all the rage with travellers these days, or whatever people have moved onto by then, some sort of direct implant into the brain perhaps. But this is an old man talking. For me nothing can replace the feel of the book, turning the page in anticipation, the smell of fresh print or the patina of an old, much loved volume with its creased pages where corners have been turned down; I always lose bookmarks. No doubt there were old men who mentally threw up their hands in horror at the invention of the paperback. Ultimately though, as with the grains of rice in offerings, it is what is inside the book, the intangible essence, that ethereal plane where mind meets mind, not the gross manifestation that is important.

However I digress, another of age’s prerogatives. Having handed over my books I thought to take myself to the temple at the top of the lane behind our little garden. On any auspicious day, of which there are many in the Balinese calendar, the temples come alive with activity. The elaborately carved and painted doors to the inner temples are thrown open to allow women in their ceremonial best to carry in the baskets of offerings piled high on their heads to lay in front of the empty throne of whichever God is being celebrated, whilst men, women and children sit in silent prayer. Not wishing to intrude I took up a position behind the small crowd, sitting on a step at the foot of another shrine, pressed my palms together in the prayer position and closed my eyes in meditation.

Whilst not exactly a Hindu myself I have the greatest respect for the way that these people have managed to retain their deep spirituality whilst at the same time being supremely pragmatic. There is no conflict in their minds between observing thousand year old rituals and booking tourists into their losmen over the internet. All new inventions are merely absorbed into their culture rather than displacing it in any way. Westerners coming here for holidays are particularly amused by the day when offerings are made to machinery. We might be able to accept a certain amount of animism, grant that certain trees might have spirits, or that waterfalls are special places, but manufactured articles, no, not really. We were like this once of course, and there are certain residual hang-overs, such as the practice some people have of giving names to their cars. But on one day of the year in Bali all cars and motor-scooters are washed, polished and then bedecked with all manner of offerings; dashboards hold woven trays of fruit, rice and flowers, wing-mirrors and handle-bars are draped with plaited palm-leaf figures, radiator grills are adorned with colourful wreaths as the ‘ghosts in the machines’ are propitiated. And then they are driven about as if nothing special was going on. It is just that day of the year when you do this. That is if you want to survive on the road. Or wish to avoid breakdowns. Pragmatism.

For example these offerings laid out on the table. They look beautiful piled up in a profusion of shapes and colours surrounded by all manner of flowers. They will have taken hours to prepare, to cook and to arrange, and would have cost no small amount of money, all for the glory of the Goddess of Art. But once she has devoured their essence the practical Balinese women will pack the remains back into their woven baskets which they will clutch as they balance side-saddle on the backs of the scooters driven by their husbands, who will also have a child or two precariously draped about him. Then the family will take the left-over’s home for a feast of their own. They could not afford it otherwise.

My thoughts were broken into as I realised that the gently tinkling bell that had accompanied my meditations for the previous twenty minutes had stopped. On opening my eyes I found a priest standing in front of me, looking resplendent in his blindingly brilliant white shirt, sarong and headscarf, and carrying a number of silver bowls. We smiled at each other and he proceeded to flick holy water over me with the aid of a frangipani flower. He had no English and I certainly have none of the High Balinese with which the commoner is supposed to address priests, so by means of gesture alone he instructed me to hold my two hands together palms upwards, right on top of left, into which he poured more holy water with which I was to wash my face and hands and finally some to drink. He then indicated I was to take some grains of damp but uncooked rice from another of his bowls and press them to my forehead, some more to my throat, and a final few to eat. He smiled and nodded to indicate that this little ritual had been performed satisfactorily and moved off to bless other members of his devout congregation, leaving me with a wonderful sense of inclusion into a society that is not mine. I felt that somehow I had been taken under the umbrella of Saraswati, that the Goddess of Art and Literature had seen into my soul and deemed me worthy of her protection, and that indeed my life was now somehow obligated to her.

This feeling lasted within me for the rest of the day just as, surprisingly, did the grains of rice remain stuck to my forehead, gathering me numerous smiles from passing Balinese as I made my way to Café Redezvousdous for some lunch. This little two-story warung is a favourite haunt of mine, where the affable expatriate French patron smiles encouragingly as I try to dredge up what little of his language remains buried in my subconscious from my schooldays some fifty years previously. Being cognisant of the high regard bordering on reverence with which his countrymen hold their native tongue I have previously been far too shy to attempt to converse with any of them in anything but English. With Marc however I have never felt any such paralysing self-consciousness, indeed I have amused myself almost as much as him in the knowledge of how much I was mangling tenses and genders of the words that I was misusing. Possibly it is knowing that we are two foreign corks bobbing in a sea of supreme linguistic masters that encourages me to try to expand my capabilities. All Balinese are fluent in at least two languages, and increasingly in several more. Balinese itself has low, middle and high languages, the latter being derived from Sanskrit, and the unrelated Bahasa Indonesia is the language of their schooling. On top of this most of the younger ones are becoming fluent in English, German or French, some even in Japanese. Tourism is such a vital part of the economy these days that they strive to learn the languages of their visitors and with their duality to start with are remarkably successful.

Having lunched on a simple nasi goreng and exchanged some ‘banter François’ with Marc I returned to my losmen for an afternoon nap before unfolding the map upon the coffee table on my veranda and planning my route for the following day’s excursion. When Wayan arrived with a glass of tea for me in the late afternoon he noticed the few grains of rice still adhering to my sweaty forehead, and nodded appreciatively. I recounted my morning’s experience and he grinned broadly. He seemed genuinely pleased with the priest’s decision to bless me, as if this reinforced a decision of his own somehow. The next day, having returned with several lengths of hand-woven Ikat cloth from the Bali Aga village of Tenganan in the east of the island, I was to find out what this decision was.

Having had my daily swim, a shower and a glass of beer I was just laying the cloths out on my bed to admire them when there was a gentle tap on my door and little Ketut presented me with a pink plastic shopping bag containing my little pile of literature. Inside, however, there were five volumes instead of four. The interloper was more in the form of a notebook, bound admittedly, not one of those floppy covered school exercise books, and relatively thick. I tried to give it back to her but she shook her little head emphatically. She has very little English as yet and my command of Indonesian, not to mention Balinese, is strictly limited. Good enough for me to undertake simple commercial transactions but very little more. I could see that the child was starting to get upset so desisted and went looking for her elder brother. On entering the family area I first encountered the fierce old woman dressed in her ceremonial finery. Same response as with the girl. When I attempted to return the volume she bent up her wrists, palms facing the book and thrust her hands towards me. Turning away I was relieved to see Wayan approaching, a huge smile across his face. I explained that this book wasn’t mine but he grinned some more and said “It is now. I’ll make you some hot tea, bring it to your room and explain.”

When he returned we sat on the veranda and he told me the story. Apparently years ago, before he was born even (I put him at about twenty-five) there was a young Englishman who had come to stay with them and had lived in my room for six or seven months. The losmen had been much more rudimentary then, two rooms only being given over to visitors and this before the swimming pool had been dug. Every day he would write in that book. Ubud was much smaller then, essentially just the main road and a couple of little lanes as offshoots. Tebesaya was an outlying village as was Peliatan, Padang Tegal, Pengosekan and all the other small settlements around that have since grown up into suburbs. Back then they had all been separated by fields of rice. To get to the Monkey Forest you had to walk the narrow grassy banks which divided up the paddy fields, not stroll down the now bustling commercial thoroughfare. Peter they had called him. He was quiet; shy even, but very friendly, a little like a Balinese Wayan said. He went to temples, took local bemos all over the island, walked everywhere around Ubud, and every night and every morning he would write in his little book. They thought he was writing a travel guide but “no,” he’d said, it was just a story, “nothing important,” he’d said, just something to clear his mind.

On Saraswati’s day they had come to him and told him that the book would have to stay in the shrine overnight. “That’s fine,” he had said, “It is finished.” And the next day he was gone.

No one knew where he had disappeared to. Some said it was back to England but a bemo driver next to the market told them that he had taken him to Denpassar and that he had been asking how to get to Padangbai. So it was assumed that he had caught a boat further east, to Lombok first and then maybe further on to Sumbawa, Flores, Timor or perhaps even further. Stories were told of him reaching Irian Jaya and disappearing into the mountains, but that was only a local legend, made up by fertile and imaginative minds.

His book had remained, and every year it was placed in the shrine along with the other household tomes. It was thought that one day he might return for it but he never had. Perhaps he had died and would never come back, except in another body, another life. This thought had disturbed their equilibrium somewhat, as arguments had broken out as to what to do with it. There were those who thought it should be thrown away, others were in favour of burying it but the old people always held firm, it had been blessed by Saraswati and should not be destroyed. Finally it was decided that the next English speaking person who wanted their books to be blessed would be given Peter’s manuscript, to do with as they would.

And so, after all these years, it has come down to me. For all the hundreds of guests they have had in the intervening years I am the first to have understood the importance of Saraswati’s day, Wayan says. He wants me to take the manuscript away with me when I leave, remove a small burden from their shoulders, take over responsibility. I can hardly refuse and besides I am now thoroughly intrigued. I turn it over in my hands. The cover had once been blue but now is somewhat mildewed. They have looked after it, kept it wrapped up in oilcloth, but the wet season in Ubud can get very damp and books are fragile creatures. I rifle through the pages and though some are stuck together I figure they will separate fairly easily with a bit of loving care and a drier climate. When I get back to Adelaide in a few days time I have decided that I will get the conservators at Art Lab to take a look at it.

For now I can’t resist a quick browse through some of the pages. Inside the front cover is a faded colour photograph of a young man, late twenties I would say, with shoulder length wavy brown hair, brown eyes and a thin face which sports a gingerish moustache and the beginnings of a wispy little van Dyke beard. He sits in what appears to be an English garden and there is a hard-back copy of Herman Hesse’s The Glass Bead Game at his feet – I recognise the dust jacket as I have the same edition on my shelves at home. On the opposite page is a title - A Short Course in Venture Capitalism. Not the most inspiring of titles, a text-book is just what I don’t need. But on further investigation it turns out to be a collection of short stories, each one independent of the others but many containing a consistent cast of characters.

From those that I can read I gradually realise that it is a form of autobiography, but one that shifts backwards and forwards in time, repeating now and again certain events or situations or possibly just expanding on what had already been written. The stories have obviously been written down as they occurred to the young man, rather than in any chronological order, which accounts for their occasional repetitions. Much as I like to read I am no expert, and have no pretensions to being able to evaluate their literary merits.

On the other hand I find the insights into another’s thoughts and feelings as he grows from an innocent boyhood into what, it seems, later became a life of crime, totally fascinating. As I read the sound of the two young girls splashing about in the pool impinges from time to time on my consciousness and I wonder about the life that they will grew up to have. In such a society it would appear to be somewhat predetermined, but then again so it would have appeared to anyone meeting the protagonist of these stories at a similar age. Time can change everything.

I have a sense of obligation to the young author. He may well be dead, or living in a cave somewhere, a jungle clearing as some kind of ascetic, or a teacher of English on some outlying island. Maybe he eventually reached my own country, and is residing as a banker somewhere, or possibly a mining magnate; he certainly has what could best be described as a business background. I do not know his real name, maybe he kept on writing and is now a well known author, one whom scholars would happily fight over the possession of his juvenilia.

Mostly the obligation I feel is to Saraswati herself, who entrusted these pages into my hands. Whatever the case may be, I have every intention of working on these texts when I return to my little cottage, editing them to a certain extent, maybe reworking them into a chronological order, and seeing if I can interest anyone in publishing them. If he is still alive they might fall into the hands of the original author, or whatever members of his family remain who perhaps have wondered for years what happened to him. Some of the people mentioned in these stories must surely still be alive, and I wonder if they will be grateful to hear of their existence, or whether they will just be too embarrassed to read them.