The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared

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 ofher 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