From Balige to Janji Raja, July 11, 2019

On a crest overhanging Lake Toba, among the birds and the trumpets of the angels, the little path of bitumen advances through the landscape. Narrow track for two-wheelers only: at times it comes undone, the bitumen crumbles into the stones and the ochre earth. I cross minuscule hamlets, a few houses elbow to elbow, and it bears a name. On spread tarps dry the andaliman nuts that numb the tongue. On some palm trees hang buckets to collect the tuak, that wine which ferments in the tree, cheap alcohol beloved of the Bataks:

– We drink it in the evening to make us warm inside.

The little path throws itself into the new road, a little wider and better surfaced. But quiet, but zigzags. Clothes spread on the guardrails. People seated at the edge of the road behind baskets full of small mangoes – the kind you eat in a full bite, with the peel. I cross Muara and it’s market day. My passing raises friendly cries:

– Hello, Mister!

– Bule! Bule!¹

On the white scooter I follow the coast, now level with the lake, now on the heights. I swallow the well-asphalted straights, I slowly nibble the stony stretches. Cinder block houses with sheet metal roofs. Batak houses with concave roofs – of sheet metal too. Long waterfalls shoot from the grassy slopes like torrents of lava.

Then I plunge, before Bakkara, into this delicious landscape: a circular bay with, at its centre, a round islet, so round – and green, so green. Treeless or nearly, as if it were melting in the water: scoop of green tea ice cream floating in a sweetened milk.

But further on, at Janji Raja, the rocks rise again under the dust and the grey clouds. Dry rice terraces, landscape of stones, of pickaxes, of hard labour to break your teeth. The tombs with crosses stand in the middle of the fields.

Here the dead are buried in the landscape.