Eat, Pray, Love

Wayan who owns Café Wayan.” Somebody else might be known as “Fat Made,” or “Nyoman-
Rental-Car” or “Stupid-Ketut-Who-Burned-Down-His-Uncle’s-House.” My new Balinese friend
Mario got around the problem by simply naming himself Mario.
“Why Mario?”
“Because I love everything Italian,” he said.
When I told him that I’d recently spent four months in Italy, he found this fact so stu-
pendously amazing that he came out from behind his desk and said, “Come, sit, talk.” I came,
I sat, we talked. And that’s how we became friends.
So this afternoon I decide to start my search for my medicine man by asking my new
friend Mario if by any chance he knows a man by the name of Ketut Liyer.
Mario frowns, thinking.
I wait for him to say something like, “Ah, yes! Ketut Liyer! Old medicine man who died just
last week—so sad when venerable old medicine man passes away.. .”
Mario asks me to repeat the name, and this time I write it down, assuming I’m pronoun-
cing something wrong. Sure enough, Mario brightens in recognition. “Ketut Liyer!”
Now I wait for him to say something like, “Ah, yes! Ketut Liyer! Insane person! Arrested
last week for being a crazy man.. .”
But he says instead, “Ketut Liyer is famous healer.”
“Yes! That’s him!”
“I know him. I go in his house. Last week I take my cousin, she needs cure for her baby
crying all night. Ketut Liyer fixes it. One time I took American girl like you to Ketut Liyer’s
house. Girl wanted magic to make her more beautiful to men. Ketut Liyer draw magic paint-
ing, for help her be more beautiful. I tease her after that. Every day I tell her, ‘Painting work-
ing! Look how beautiful you are! Painting working!’ ”
Remembering the image Ketut Liyer had drawn for me a few years ago, I tell Mario that I’d
gotten a magic picture myself from the medicine man once.
Mario laughs. “Painting working for you, too!”
“My picture was to help me find God,” I explain.
“You don’t want to be more beautiful to men?” he asks, understandably confused.
I say, “Hey, Mario—do you think you could take me to visit Ketut Liyer someday? If you’re
not too busy?”
“Not now,” he says.
Just as I’m starting to feel disappointed, he adds, “But maybe in five minutes?”
Eat, Pray, Love