Twilight in Djakarta (9 page)

Pranoto quickly rose and grasped Achmad’s hand.

‘Forgive me,’ said Pranoto, ‘if my words have wounded your feelings, brother. Believe me, it was not my intention to offend you. If we must part, let’s part in friendship. You, brother, have
your convictions; we have our convictions too. In our view every advance of man should be attained only by means of and on the principles of democracy. This is, of course, a difficult and probably a slow way, yet we are convinced that it’s the one and only way to ensure freedom and human happiness.’

Achmad looked at Pranoto, and in the end their longstanding friendship triumphed, and Achmad, too, shook Pranoto’s hand.

Thereafter he shook hands with his other friends, and at the door he said,

‘Good night, all my friends!’

After Achmad had left they all sat staring, until Pranoto broke the silence by asking,

‘Was he really angry?’

‘No, I don’t think that he was really very angry,’ answered Murhalim. ‘He is now active in a workers’ organisation, and actually was only waiting for an excuse to get out of our discussion club. It’s not likely that he would be angered merely by Pranoto’s statement. It was nothing exceptional. We’ve had much bitterer and more acrimonious debates before, and nothing happened. I think he’s received orders to leave our club.’

He was startled by the words of Mandur Kasir who was busy lighting an oil wall lamp and was saying to him,

‘Please, brother, just sit down. My wife is busy with the child in the bath.’

And he felt even more disconcerted when he was left sitting alone in the room with the windows open and the doors ajar. Outside twilight was descending, but the blue of the sky was still visible. His eyes roved wildly around the room. A room with plaited bamboo walls pasted over with old newspapers which were already torn in several places, an old mat on the brick floor,
a bamboo sleeping-bench with a thin mattress on it, the worn rattan chair in which he sat, a table to eat on with four dilapidated chairs. A cupboard with one of its doors open, and inside only a few tin plates and the other shelves empty.

From the back of the house he heard Mandur Kasir’s voice talking to his wife, and the voice of a woman answering, and then the gay outcries of a child splashing in the water. And he felt increasingly uneasy in this room with its windows and doors wide open, not locked.

He stepped over to the window and looked outside, feeling very odd. And that moment he heard the steps and the voice of Mandur Kasir saying to him again,

‘Sit down, brother Abu. We’ll have some tea. My wife will come in a few minutes.’ He jumped a little, startled, and felt as if he had been guilty standing there at the open window.

He sat down at the table with Mandur Kasir who poured hot tea into cups, carefully spooning out some sugar from an old butter-tin. And then they both sipped their tea in silence. It was difficult for him to start a conversation and he just sat, saying nothing, holding his cup of hot tea with both hands. Finally Mandur Kasir spoke.

‘Tonight, brother Abu, you sleep in our house. Tomorrow morning I will see you to the station. Don’t be afraid of anything any more. What’s past is done with.’

When Mandur Kasir’s wife appeared carrying a baby about a year old Mandur Kasir introduced her to the man. He rose to his feet awkwardly, facing the woman who stretched out her hand to him. He was at a loss as to what to say when she excused their poor home. What could he say? The place where he had stayed for the last twenty years could not be compared at all with this room of Mandur Kasir’s. That’s why he remained silent, and Mandur Kasir’s wife went to the kitchen to prepare food.

A few moments later he was again left alone in the room when Mandur Kasir went out to join his wife in the kitchen. And so he
was alone in that room, holding his warm and now almost empty cup of tea.

‘Without meaning to, you’ve humiliated the man,’ Mandur Kasir said to his wife in the kitchen. ‘It’s too bad you were apologising for our room, that it’s so broken-down and dingy. Didn’t you know that he has spent the last twenty years in jail?’

Mandur Kasir’s wife exclaimed softly, while Mandur Kasir continued,

‘He was released from prison only this morning after having served his twenty years’ sentence. He must return to his village in Kediri. But there was some delay with his papers, so he cannot leave until tomorrow. I felt sorry for him and have invited him to stay overnight with us. Tomorrow morning I’ll see him to the station.’

Mandur Kasir’s wife looked up, full of fear.

‘Ah, don’t be afraid of anything,’ said Mandur Kasir. ‘I’ve known him for the last eight years. He never made any trouble in prison. Just worked quietly. He was sentenced for having killed a man twenty years ago. Why he killed him I don’t know either. But, so that you don’t feel afraid, I’ll sleep in the outside room with him, and you may lock the door of the sleeping-room from inside.’

When Mandur Kasir re-entered the front room he saw Abu tilting one of the dining-chairs which was almost falling to pieces.

‘Ah,’ said Mandur Kasir, ‘this chair really needs to be repaired. I’ll bring a hammer and some nails.’

Mandur Kasir went to the open cupboard, crouched down and took out a heavy iron hammer and a box with nails.

‘Come, I will fix it,’ said Abu shyly.

Mandur Kasir looked at him for a moment, then handed over the hammer and the box of nails to him. Abu quickly went to work repairing the wobbly chair. But when it was done he tackled in turn the other three chairs, so that by the time he had finished nailing together the fourth one Mandur Kasir’s wife had finished heating the vegetable broth in the kitchen and had come in to set
the food on the table. Abu put away the hammer and the nail-box, setting them against the wall near the cupboard.

After the meal he sat on the balai-balai, watching how Mandur Kasir performed the prescribed magrib prayers, and thereafter the Isa
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prayers, and after that Mandur Kasir went into the sleepingroom, and he could hear only their voices whispering. Mandur Kasir came out again carrying a rolled-up mat and a kain, and said to him,

‘If, brother Abu, you’re tired already, just go to sleep. Here’s a mat and a kain.’

He took the mat and the cloth, and spread the mat on the floor near the cupboard. Mandur Kasir stretched out on the balai-balai. Abu rolled himself a nipah-palm-leaf cigarette, and Mandur Kasir lit his pipe. They both smoked in silence, while in the adjoining room Mandur Kasir’s baby cried from time to time, was soothed by his mother and relapsed into sleep. Gradually the noises around them in the other houses subsided. Only from afar sounds of a radio, turned up to top volume, penetrated the bamboo walls of Mandur Kasir’s house, with nostalgic tunes of Sundanese ketjapi music.

‘What will you do when you are back in your village, brother?’ asked Mandur Kasir suddenly.

Mandur Kasir’s question startled Abu. How could he answer it? It was impossible for him to think up an answer to such a question. He didn’t know what he would do when back in his village. For twenty years he never had to think about what to do next, now, yesterday or tomorrow, so he’d long lost the ability to think for himself. Since his release that morning he had been at a complete loss. He had killed a man when he was thirty. He didn’t really remember clearly that he was thirty years old when he killed the man. Also, the reason why he had killed him was by now dimmed in his memory. The only thing he knew was that he had spent a
very long time in prison, until his hair had greyed, his body had become lean, the body of an old man who was always doing hard work, and the leanness of body which hides strength.

Because he could not find an answer, and because he felt upset by Mandur Kasir’s question, his voice was abrupt and
indifferent-sounding
when he said,

‘Who knows, I don’t!’

Something in that abrupt voice made Mandur Kasir turn and look at him. But Abu’s face was already turned to the floor, his eyes fixed on the hammer and the nail-box near the wall. After a few minutes Mandur Kasir said,

‘Whatever you do, brother, remember, never kill anyone again. You will be locked up in prison again!’

Thereafter Mandur Kasir turned down the flame of the lamp and lay back to sleep, pulling the sarong over his head to protect himself from mosquitoes.

The old man just out of prison stared at the wall, his open, unblinking eyes followed the images that floated past them. Mandur Kasir’s question had increased his anxiety in his
out-of
-prison situation, and the darkness around him seemed threatening, full of danger. In prison he had felt calm and secure. Behind the iron bars everything was decided for him. But a window one could open oneself; a door that was not locked for him, the freedom given to him after twenty years of regulated life – he, now tossed out into the world outside the prison walls, felt as if he had lost firm ground, as if he were naked … his hand moved towards the hammer; grasping it, he turned around to look at Mandur Kasir who was already asleep, snoring. If I kill him, I’ll be back in prison. It buzzed in his brain, and he got up cautiously, approached Mandur Kasir, raised the hammer, but before sending the blow at Mandur Kasir’s head something seemed to explode in his brain, he lowered his hand, he felt dizzy and knew not what to do.

He stepped back towards his mat, when the door of the
sleeping-room opened, and Mandur Kasir’s wife carrying her baby came in, saying,

‘People are asleep already, and here he soils himself again ….’ But she stopped dead as she saw in the dimness of the half-dark room that she was not addressing her husband. And as she caught sight of the hammer in Abu’s hand she opened her mouth to cry out in fright, which struck the convict with terror. He leaped to shut the mouth of the woman who was going to scream, she pushed him away, they struggled, the baby cried and the ex-convict swung the hammer down on the head of Mandur Kasir’s wife. Stunned, she fell to the floor. The baby, lost from her grip, cried on the floor; the convict jumped on the baby. Again he swung the hammer. The baby was still, its head crushed. Mandur Kasir, shocked out of sleep, yelled, and in one leap the ex-convict was near him swinging the hammer …. Mandur Kasir screamed,

‘You’re mad!’

The hammer crushed his skull and Mandur Kasir collapsed near the wall, slid down on the balai-balai, blood streaming from his broken head.

All was still again in the house, the only audible sound was the heavy breathing of the ex-convict in the dimness of the room.

He looked around the dim room – Mandur Kasir whose head was crushed, the baby whose head was crushed, the woman whose head was crushed and the blood-smeared hammer in his hand, and suddenly he hurled the hammer against the wall and ran to the door.

But the door, when he pushed it, opened wide. Startled, he retreated a step, howled in terror and then burst into laughter, like a madman.

H
ALIM WHISTLED
softly in the bathroom. He was in high spirits. Standing before the mirror, he shaved his moustache, glancing from time to time at some neatly typed sheets laid out on the little table near the mirror. Then, turning back to the mirror, he rehearsed passages of the speech that he was going to deliver that night in parliament.

At certain passages of his address, he laughed aloud into the mirror, ‘ … there are a number of people nowadays who make special efforts to show that they are genuine nationalists,’ he declaimed, assuming the posture of one speaking in parliament. ‘Thus, quite recently, brother de Vries arrived in Parliament wearing a sarong, and he told us that he had donned this sarong as proof of his true nationalism. Could anything be funnier? Isn’t it like saying that when a lutung
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puts on a sarong and claims to be human we must believe him?’

Halim paused and looked into the mirror. Here they’ll certainly burst into laughter and applaud, he thought. And again he chuckled. His high spirits were occasioned not only by the prospect of addressing parliament that night. Just before he went into the bathroom, a telephone call from the bank had informed him that his application for a two-million-rupiah loan to expand the printing plant of his newspaper had been approved.

‘Ah, you Halim,’ he said to his image in the mirror, ‘they imagine that they will use you. But you’re going to use them for your own ends.’

His radiant mood was clouded over for a moment as he recalled
an argument he had had last night with his wife on the same subject. His wife had told him that a lot of people were beginning to talk, saying that the newspaper man Halim had sold himself. And he had denied it heatedly, and he’d asserted that it was he who was making use of the politicians for his own ends. Those people who talk are just envious, don’t pay any attention to them, he had told his wife.

Thinking of his wife, Halim smiled. He remembered how a few weeks ago, before he was appointed to parliament, his wife had told him about the djelangkung
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oracle. His wife, together with four of her friends, all eager to question the djelangkung, had gone to the house of a Chinese family in Djatinegara.

According to his wife’s story, the ancestral spirit of the little girls who held the djelangkung had manifested itself. His wife had asked whether Halim would become a member of parliament. And immediately the djelangkung had nodded. And now he was indeed a member of parliament. Halim wasn’t usually superstitious. But in this case he too wavered somewhat. For hadn’t it come true for himself?

His wife believed strongly in the djelangkung and in dukuns.
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According to his wife, Mrs. Suroto had gone to the djelangkung in Djatinegara six months ago to ask whether her husband would get the post of ambassador to London. And the venerable djelangkung had nodded. And true enough, three months later, Mr. Suroto was appointed as ambassador and sent by the government to London.

Halim cautiously guided the razor, especially near the scar on his left cheek; he had got it when he was only eighteen months old. He had fallen off a ladder and his cheek had been cut open by a sharp stone on the ground. But after the revolution, however, this scar had come to stand for a wound he had sustained while
fighting for the revolution. The story that the wound was sustained then had started when a foreign correspondent who had come to see him had asked,

‘Did you get this wound during the revolution?’

‘Ah, not at all,’ Halim had answered.

Nevertheless, this correspondent later published an article in which he described meeting an important Indonesian newspaper man who had an influential position, and who had been wounded during the revolution. Halim read the article, and when later one of his friends, who had read the article too, asked about the wound, he had replied, ‘Ah, it’s nothing!’ But now there were many people who really believed that he had received the wound while fighting in the revolution, even though no one knew precisely in which of the battles Halim had been wounded.

Halim laughed again at his face in the mirror while his fingers stroked the scar. A little lie like this has its uses. Makes people respectful and a bit different towards you, he said to himself.

He washed his face and took a quick bath. While rubbing his body with the towel he read his speech, and then rehearsed it again, looking at his own face in the mirror.

Udin, Hermanto and Bambang had been waiting for fifteen minutes in the office of the All-Indonesian Dockworkers Union at Tandjong Priok. Three days earlier they had sent in a complaint to the central committee to the effect that all their members insisted that the union take action to alleviate the workers’ conditions. For many months now their pay had not been nearly enough to meet the ever-rising costs of living. In the beginning the leadership of the union told them to be patient, the government was busy launching programmes to improve the people’s welfare, and that demands for pay increases at this time would in no way improve the workers’ living conditions. Even worse, if the wages were raised, the prices for goods would go up also and the workers
themselves would be the first to suffer. Therefore the correct thing to do would be to urge the government to force the prices down.

Six months had gone by since the leadership had issued this communication to the workers. Yet during this period the prices, far from going down, had actually shot up higher than ever. And now in the last week the workers again had started to press for action.

‘How can they continue ordering us to keep pacifying our people?’ said Bambang. ‘And especially when the other unions do not stop pressing for better wages. Many of our members have already joined other unions. If we continue our present policies we’re sure to lose!’

‘Let’s hear first what the leadership has to say. They’re going to send brother Achmad down to talk things over with us,’ said Udin.

‘As for myself, I’m with the majority,’ added Hermanto. ‘If they feel dissatisfied with the present leaders who support the cabinet, while the government pays no attention to the people’s welfare, then I’ll go along – we should get out of this union and take our members to some other union that really fights for the workers’ interests.’

‘Hush, don’t speak like that, friend,’ Udin responded quickly. ‘The leadership would be very angry to hear you talk this way. Aren’t we always supposed to trust and obey the leaders?’

‘Obey, obey,’ Hermanto retorted. ‘But how can we tell a hungry and suffering worker to keep on obeying?’

Sounds of approaching steps were heard outside, and then the door opened and Achmad came in. The three of them rose to greet him, and Achmad, while greeting them each in turn, was saying,

‘Forgive me, I am late. Through no fault of mine. The train was shunted about for ages in front of the station near the harbour entrance. I was delayed by half an hour.’

The four of them settled round the table and Bambang, who acted as secretary of the Tandjong Priok Branch of the
All-Indonesian 
Dockworkers Union, opened his briefcase and took out some papers. He handed Achmad a typed report, saying,

‘This is a copy of the report which we have sent to the central committee.’

Achmad spoke.

‘Yes, we’ve already received and examined it,’ he replied. ‘The important question now is how we are to retain the trust and loyalty of the workers. It looks as if among yourselves, brothers, there are some who have already lost faith in the party.’ And Achmad looked sharply at Hermanto. ‘This spirit of defeatism is not permissible. We are in the middle of a struggle to crush capitalism and colonialism, and the reactionaries still have many stooges among our own people, plotting with the foreign capitalists.’

‘The question is not one of disloyalty to the party,’ Hermanto put in at once. He was a quick-tempered man. He could work tirelessly if he believed in the job to be done, but his anger and hate could be aroused with equal intensity if he felt he was being cheated.

‘How can we tell the workers to keep on being patient, and tell them that to go on strike at this time would harm the government now in power, and that this government is really progressive and genuinely concerned about the people’s welfare? How can the workers believe us, when they must cope every day with wages that aren’t nearly enough to cover their daily needs? And the price of food, clothing and other necessities keeps going up?’

‘We understand the difficulties of the leaders on your level, who are in direct contact with the workers,’ answered Achmad. ‘Nevertheless, the question is one of conviction. Whether you can convince the workers to remain loyal and to support our struggle. It has been stressed by the party, time and again, that the present government is more progressive than any other government Indonesia has ever had. Despite this we are not blind, of course, to some aspects of the government’s policies
that do not benefit the people. But, for the sake of our party’s growth, we must continue to support this cabinet. We do not agree with their economic and financial policies, and we intend to try to correct this in short order.’

‘In other words, for the sake of expanding the party’s power, you order us to sacrifice the workers’ welfare?’ asked Hermanto pointedly.

Achmad gave Hermanto a long, sharp look. Through his mind flashed: Hermanto is already spoiled for us! We’ll have to be careful with him! He may betray us! Must report to the party!

‘You take the wrong view of the problem, brother,’ answered Achmad. He immediately decided to change his tactics in talking with Hermanto. Pushing him won’t work, he thought.

‘It’s not our intention at all to sacrifice the welfare of the working people. Far from it. It’s actually quite the other way about; the party is working day and night trying to improve the workers’ lot. We do not want to strike now, or join in supporting those strikes that are promoted by unions dominated by the reactionaries, because we know that there are other ways for improving the workers’ conditions.’

‘What ways?’ pressed Hermanto.

Hermanto’s blood was beginning to boil with anger and resentment. This party man has it easy, just talking, he thought. They never meet the workers face to face. All they can do is dish up theories. Can you feed a worker, or clothe him, with theories?

Achmad looked at Hermanto, then at Bambang, then at Udin and said to himself: This Hermanto is a really stubborn fellow.

‘We must have complete and absolute faith in the leadership of the party. It’s only the party that understands and can lead the struggle of the proletariat correctly.’

His voice conveyed disapproval of Hermanto’s question.

Hermanto felt it, but could no longer contain his pent-up resentment.

‘Brothers,’ said Hermanto, ‘from the time I entered the party I gave all my strength, working day and night, to fight for the workers’ interests. I was arrested time and again, accused of agitating when we engaged in large-scale strikes under previous cabinets. And it was always the party that gave us orders to do so, because it was for defending the workers’ cause. At present the plight of the workers is even worse than it was during previous cabinets. And the workers urge us to give them leadership in taking action, to demand improvement of their plight. And the party says this is not permitted, that the workers must continue to be patient and must not make demands though strikes. This I do not understand. Are the workers here for the party, or is the party here for the workers?’

Hermanto glanced round him, and then looked intently at Bambang and Udin.

‘Brothers Bambang and Udin,’ he then said, ‘you both, brothers, have heard the workers’ bitter complaints yourselves, and the three of us have often discussed them and said that we should urge the party to take the lead by swift action to improve these conditions. Come on, brothers, let’s hear your opinions, too.’

For a moment Udin and Bambang just gazed in silence, looked at Achmad, then turned their faces away from Hermanto and didn’t say a word. Hermanto regarded them in deep astonishment. He had never seen his two friends act so strangely before.

‘Why are you both silent?’ he asked them with surprise.

Achmad just kept quiet looking at Hermanto. Something mysterious and uncanny seemed to have crept into the room where the four of them sat, as though the room were permeated by a darkness whose chill gripped the heart. For an instant Hermanto felt as though he were in a remote and eerie world, that he was sitting there with strange creatures, human beings he did not know at all. He was still for a moment, trying to disentangle and understand his own bewilderment. Then, in a
rush, he was swept by anger.

‘Why don’t you speak up? So you’re afraid to talk? Isn’t it true what I said?’ he half shouted.

Udin and Bambang still said nothing, and then Achmad cleared his throat and said,

‘Brother Hermanto! Actually brothers Bambang and Udin feel that the policy of our party is perfectly correct, and they don’t want to say anything so as not to embarrass you any further. And I advise you, brother, to re-examine your ideas and your attitude; if you persist in thinking as you do now you are certain to become the victim of the reactionaries.’

Hermanto looked at Achmad in perplexity and amazement, and then at Udin and Bambang. All sorts of thoughts darted through his mind. Why have they become like this? Why are they afraid? Are they right, perhaps, and I am wrong? But his anger got the better of him, he rose to his feet, pounded the table and his eyes glowed.

‘Now I see what the party’s game has been all this time. In order to advance the party, the workers’ well-being is sacrificed. This means that the working class exists for the party, and not the party for the working class!’

‘Ah, you’ve got it all wrong again, brother,’ spoke Achmad. To himself he had decided to recommend that Hermanto be ousted from the union leadership as soon as possible. Too dangerous, has ideas of his own, undisciplined and doesn’t trust the party ….