The Rainbow Troops (21 page)

A FEW days after Mister Samadikun's inspection, our order of state symbols arrived. We hung them in their honorable, required positions. Bruce Lee and John Lennon did not want to put up a fight. They peacefully accepted the
coup d'état
.

It didn't last long. Three days later, a few PN foremen entered our classroom and asked Bu Mus' permission to take the symbols down. Apparently, they didn't want to be involved in any criminal proceedings later in the event those state symbols were run over by the dredges. They knew that the law protected the symbols; whereas to run over us—eleven students, native inhabitants of Belitong, Indonesian citizens—and a hundred-year-old poor village school seemed to be no problem at all. There was no law to punish PN if they did that, and there was no law to protect us.

More and more tin exploration machines arrived, one after another. The dredges were getting closer. The giant machines, as big as football fields and as tall as coco nut trees, pointed their snouts straight at our school. Our school sat like a paralyzed rabbit surrounded by a pack of hyenas.

For almost two years, we had been under pressure from Mister Samadikun. We had finally succeeded in subduing him. But PN wasn't something that could be opposed. Over hundreds of years, no one had ever stood in their way of exploiting tin. If the case required giving compensation, their resources were limitless. It was common for dredges to roll over gardens, markets, villages, and even government offices. A poor school was petty, nothing more than a small speck of dirt under the tip of PN's fingernail.

Despite our strong desire to hold on, we finally became realistic. We were no match for PN. And with Pak Harfan's passing, Bu Mus' morale deteriorated. It had never happened before, but she began to frequently ask us if she could be excused from teaching.

Every rest period, we sat in a sad daze looking at the half of our schoolyard already crushed by landleveling equipment. This was the biggest trial that had ever befallen us, and we grew more hopeless with every passing day. Bu Mus looked at us desperately. There was one thing that frightened her more than the school being destroyed by dredges, a fear shared by the late Pak Harfan. Ultimately, the thing they were most afraid came to pass.

Today, following three days of not showing his big head at school, Kucai was absent once again. Our class was in chaos without the legendary class president. Bu Mus asked Kucai's father about it, and he informed her that Kucai had been leaving every morning for school. A scandal exploded.

After much investigation, it turned out Kucai had joined up with kids from the neighboring village to become a pepper picker.

Wednesday night, the night of payday, after studying the Koran at alHikmah mosque, Kucai pulled out a wad of money from behind his sarong. He licked the tip of his finger as he counted his money over and over again, just like a pawn shop cashier. He already knew the total. Not a word slid out of his tricky mouth. It was a truly dreadful solicitation. Soliciting, it turned out, was Kucai's hidden talent.

The next day, Samson went missing.

It was highly unusual for Samson to be absent on a Thursday—it was time for Gym and Health, his favorite class.

We didn't hear from him for a week. The following Wednesday night, he came to Koranic studies with a pitch black body and even bigger muscles than before. He had become a copra coolie. From behind his sarong, he pulled out a bottle.

"The newest hairgrowing oil made in Pakistan!" he said proudly.

"Expensive," he stated firmly, while stroking a picture of a bearded man on the bottle.

"It's made from lizard sweat! It's very strong! You could even smear it on your forehead and it would grow hair," he said as he rubbed my forehead.

Then he unbuttoned his shirt. My God, it was the real thing! Samson's chest was growing hair. The nostrils on his flat nose flared happily at my astonishment. He rebuttoned his shirt, giving off the impression that after six years of school and not being able to buy anything, in just six days of carrying copra, he could buy a special tonic
made in Pakistan!

The next day, Mahar disappeared.

Evidently he added time to his job as a coconut grater. At first he only worked part time after school, but now he was a fulltimer
.
The upgrade in status meant only one thing: goodbye, school. Three days later, when our Koran studies teacher wasn't looking, he pulled something out from behind his sarong: a double stick! Bruce Lee's ultimate weapon! Mahar was elated. He had wanted to buy a double stick his whole life, and now his dream had come true.

Unfortunately, whatever Mahar did would surely be followed by his faithful disciple A Kiong.

One Monday morning, the tip of A Kiong's nose and his tin can head were not present.

A Kiong did not want to be far from his sensei, Mahar. He chose a career as a cake seller. He carried the cakes in a washbasin on his head and sold them around the market where Mahar worked as a coconut grater at a Chinese produce shop.

A Kiong told me that carrying the moist cakes on his head actually seemed to be promising work.

"You make more doing this than you do diving for golf balls, Ikal. Selling cakes is little work for decent money, and you don't have to compete with crocodiles."

I thought about what we often did to make money, diving for the unreachable golf balls driven into the lake that the nouveau riche, PN staff, and beginning golfers were unable to retrieve themselves. We then sold the balls back to the caddies.

A Kiong patted the coins in his bulging pocket, and they jingled. The jingling enchanted me.

The next Monday, I—Ikal—abandoned school to sell cake at the market.

Ever since we first entered school, we were endlessly afflicted by irony. The newest irony was Kucai: The class president, the one who was supposed to raise our morale, had dropped out of school and, in doing so, had started a chain reaction that could bankrupt our school. Like I've always told you, friend, that is the opportunistic nature of a born politician.

That left Sahara, Flo, Trapani, Harun, Syahdan, and Lintang in the class. As a matter of fact, Syahdan had wanted to persevere, but Bu Mus' endless grieving over the passing of Pak Harfan spread a pessimistic atmosphere. With just a little nudge from Kucai, Syahdan fled school to claim for himself the revered duty of boat caulker.

Someone
was still enthusiastic, in spite of blown bicycle tires, a bicycle chain fastened together with plastic twine, and a commute rife with crocodiles chases—Lintang. He didn't care that his friends had fled school and that it was under the threat of dredges. He still tried to arrive earliest and always went home last.

"I will keep on studying until the sacred beam supporting this school collapses," he said to me with conviction.

That sacred beam was a relic of Pak Harfan, and Lintang always saw it as a symbol of our school's struggle.

Because Bu Mus often didn't come to school anymore, Lintang took over her tasks. He taught everything, from Math to Islamic history, just like Bu Mus. His students were Sahara, Flo, Trapani, and Harun. Together they were the five faithful students willing to hold on.

Bu Mus was incredibly surprised when Mujis told her that, from a distance, it looked like there were still people going to our school. She wondered,
Who could those people be? Didn't the school have to be vacated because it would soon be struck by the dredges?

She jumped on her bike and pedaled like crazy toward the school.

When she got to the schoolyard, she leaned her bike up against the
filicium
. She heard a jumble of voices coming from the classroom. She approached the classroom nervously and peeked through the cracks in the wall. Her body trembled when she saw Lintang explaining to Sahara, Flo, Trapani and Harun the story of how Indonesia's first president—Soekarno—struggled to continue his studies for the sake of Indonesia's independence while he was imprisoned by the Dutch in Bandung.

Tears trickled down Bu Mus' face. She had once told us that story to ignite our spirit to fight for our school, no matter what.

I WAS hunched beneath the washbasin, so I didn't see the face of the person picking through them.

She asked, "How much are these, young man?"

I was stunned. I knew that voice from the first word. Bu Mus stood firmly in front of me.

"Ikal," she said slowly, "come back to school."

I felt sorry for Bu Mus, but holding onto the school was about as possible as catching the wind to keep in my hands.

"What else can we do,
Ibunda
Guru?"

"I have the ultimate plan," she said.

I brushed her off, and she was disappointed. She then approached A Kiong and Mahar. I saw them shake their heads no, too.

"Don't give up hope. Come to school next Monday. We will talk about my plan," Bu Mus ordered us.

I later heard that, after visiting us, Bu Mus rode her bike for dozens of kilometers, deep into the pepper plantations in the forest in order to find Kucai. She searched for her student among hundreds of underage boys and girls working as pepper pickers; not one among them had ever been to school.

Bu Mus asked anyone who would listen about Kucai, showing them his photo. After two days in the plantation, sleeping in the houses of the residents, Bu Mus succeeded in finding our class president. She was doing exactly what Pak Harfan used to do: persuading underage kids to go to school.

After giving an indifferent Kucai a long and thorough lecture, Bu Mus got into a boat with the Sarong people. She was sailing to Melidang Island on the east side of Belitong to find Samson, who was working there as a copra coolie.

Apparently, Kucai and Samson held the same attitude as A Kiong, Mahar, and me. Bu Mus glumly informed me that Kucai and Samson had already been poisoned by money and refused to return to school.

We didn't want to go back to school because we didn't want to get our hopes up. It would only hurt Bu Mus even more if our school couldn't be saved, and it would also hurt us. If it were only a matter of financial difficulty, a nearly collapsed school building, people's insults, and threats from Mister Samadikun, we could still try, we would still be willing to hold on; but opposing PN was impossible. I tried to talk some sense into Bu Mus.

"It's over,
Ibunda
Guru. Maybe all those people are right. Just let go of the school."

Bu Mus' grip on the handlebars of her bicycle tightened visibly. She clearly rejected the suggestion. She would never, for any reason, agree to watch the old Muhammadiyah School be destroyed.

"The head PN miner said that you would be given a job teaching at the PN School as compensation. Take the opportunity, the salary is huge!" Mahar urged.

That news had already spread through the village. Bu Mus looked Mahar in the eye. "I would never trade you all for anything!"

When our discussion finished in the late afternoon, Bu Mus went to the flood plains of the Linggang River to search for Syahdan. She searched for him all evening. The tide was high, the wind was strong, and the fishermen boarded their boats to repair them. Reaping the benefits of caulking boats held more of a draw for Syahdan than studying at a school that by tomorrow—or the day after tomorrow—would be level with the ground. It was hard to blame Syahdan for thinking this.

On Friday evening, one week after Bu Mus came to see me at the market, I ran into Mujis. He told me the same thing he had told Bu Mus—that there were still students studying in our classroom. I wanted to see for myself.

The next day, when I finished selling my cakes, I went to the school. The schoolyard was already a mess. Amidst the tin-exploitation machines, our school looked depressed and powerlessly backed into a corner. The giant machines gave off vibrations so powerful they made the school more crooked and caused the roof shingles to fall down, rendering much of the school roofless. It was alarming. One gust of strong wind, and the school would collapse.

Who knew where the yellow bamboo flagpole went? The bell too had vanished. The Muhammadiyah name board had fallen down and lay pitifully sprawled out on the ground. Our beautiful flower garden had fallen apart. The planked wall at the back of our classroom was no more. The villagers figured our school couldn't be saved, and so had pried off the planks in the dark of night.

Our classroom had become a half-open room. The beams that used to support the back wall were now being used by the neighbors to tie up their cattle. If one of the cows were to tug just a little bit, our school would surely fall down. The only things left in our classroom were the chalkboard, the glass display case with the two grand trophies inside, Rhoma Irama'sRhoma Irama's
Rain of Money
, Bruce Lee's
The dragon kung fufight to the death
, and John Lennon's
Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans
.

From between the gaps in one of the remaining walls, I spotted Lintang explaining a math problem to Sahara, Flo, Trapani, and Harun. He was teaching under the intense sun because there was no roof above the chalkboard. His sweat poured, but his energy raged on and his bright eyes shone. He was enthusiastic, stepping closer to his students every once in a while as he taught.

Lintang accidentally spotted me. He came out of the classroom.

"Hey, it's you, Ikal!" he greeted me happily.

"Come on in, let's study! We're working on math. It's wonderful!"

It was touching; Lintang was not willing to take heed of our school's impending fate. I asked him, "Why do you still hold on, Lintang?

Lintang smiled. "Didn't I already tell you,
Boi
? I will keep on studying until the sacred beam supporting this school collapses."

Our school's main beam still stood strong. Dozens of other beams were connected to and depending on it. It was like someone holding a family afloat so they wouldn't drown.

"You see it yourself, right? Our school's sacred beam is still standing strong."

"But soon it will collapse," I said hopelessly. Lintang stared at me. He said slowly, "I will not disappoint my mother and father, Ikal. They want me to continue my schooling. We have to have dreams, high dreams,
Boi
, and school is the road we start on. Don't give up,
Boi
. Don't ever give up."

He had brought me to a halt.

"We have to continue our education, so our children won't have to go to a school like this, so we won't be treated unfairly."

Lintang's voice was bitter.

"Don't quit school,
Boi
. Don't."

I hid my face behind the washbasin I was carrying. I couldn't bear to look at Lintang. I didn't have the guts into look at the face of a person this great. And I was ashamed, ashamed of my flowing tears.