Monkeys in the Dark

by Blanche d'Alpuget

Sinclaire watched her walk out of the room, only his anger holding in check the misery that was swelling up in his chest. He could see and hear Usman panting, the long lids fluttering over his eyes.

  Sinclaire gulped in a breath, then glared at the spot where his cousin had left the room. Poor little Alex, he thought. I wonder how long you’ll be broken-hearted after what’s coming to you?

  The next morning Alex handed in a form to Colonel James stating that the identity papers of her three servants were in order. The Colonel broke into a fugue of grunts and offered Alex another speckled cigarette from the green elephant box.

  ‘You’ll be coming to our pesta tonight, won’t you?’ he asked. ‘Mim’ (he called his wife by the title the servants used) ‘Mim has gone to some special trouble. We’ve invited quite a few locals, but these blackouts are a worry. The locals won’t turn up if there’s a blackout—or, if they do, they leave their Ibus at home with the kids. Understandable, I suppose, after what happened last year … But you’ll be there, Alex. That makes fifteen women and twenty-five men.’ He chuckled. ‘Pretty good ratio, eh? You might meet a tall, dark stranger, eh? Those young officers who’ve been through the ABRI college, they’re the new élite, you know. Marvellous chaps. Any country would be proud of them.’ He did not like Alex’s expression, for he leant forward and added, ‘The Army could have taken over here any time in the past sixteen years, but they chose not to. They chose to let the civilians have a go. And the civilians mucked things up nicely. Let the corns run riot. Bankrupted the place. You young civilians tend to forget that.’

  Alex was dismissed.

  She resumed editing the day’s press release in low spirits. She did not want to go to the James’s party that evening; she had hoped that Maruli would come round for dinner. But when she had rung the Pusat at seven o’clock that morning a student had answered and told her Maruli was giving a class and could not be interrupted. By eight, when she next tried to contact him, the overburdened Djakarta telephone system had succumbed to its daily indigestion and the engaged signal had sounded as soon as she had dialled the first number. People said that during the wet season city telephone connection broke down entirely for days at a time, and that diplomats set out by car to go to other embassies, or to the Indonesian Foreign Office, only to arrive and discover that those they sought to contact were themselves driving around the flooded streets. It would be another few weeks before the sky broke and the rains began.

  The weather seemed hotter today, and there had been more traffic jams than usual on the way to work. Trucks full of young, grinning soldiers were arriving for Independence Day. They looked dashing in their jungle greens and scarlet berets and had waved their sub-machine-guns in a friendly way at Alex and David, stalled behind them in the embassy car. Many more buildings and private houses were now flying the Red and White, giving an air of anticipation to the city. In the small park near the street where General Nasution lived, another machine-gun had been set up and extra barbed-wire barricades were stacked.

  Alex tried to ring Maruli again at two o’clock, before going home, but the line was still busy.

  At home she found Itji in a nervous state: the price of rice had increased sharply and there had not been enough money for her to fulfil her shopping list in the markets. Also, a child there had had her gold earrings cut out of her ears by a thief. The child had bled profusely; the police who patrolled the markets had caught the thief and had saved him from the crowd only by firing warning shots. Itji described it all in detail.

  That evening when Alex was getting dressed for the James’s party Itji lingered at the bedroom doorway, watching balefully as Alex picked through her jewellery. There was a blackout and Bagong had already started the generator.

  ‘You should wear pearls, Non,’ she said at last. ‘Nobody wants to steal pearls.’ Alex thought about the trip she had to make to the James’s house through dark streets crowded with armed, undisciplined troops, and decided this was good advice. She tried to ring Maruli again before leaving the house, but although by this time the telephones were working again, there was no answer at the Pusat.

  The street in which the Jameses lived was narrow. It required all the attention of the military guards provided for authorised gatherings—permission had to be sought for any Djakarta gathering of more than five adults—to direct the party traffic. Alex’s chauffeur had to park well up the street, on the guards’ insistence, and she then had to pick her way over the pavement, avoiding uncovered manholes, to reach the house. The front gate was surrounded by about thirty giggling urchins. ‘Ullo, Mister,’ the children chanted in English at Alex as she worked her way through them. She ignored their demands for money and cigarettes and got through the crowd with only a few pinches on her arms. It was a relief to get inside the house and to be greeted by Bette James, in brown silk shantung, with a tuft of marca-site on her imperial bosom. The Colonel looked like a grasshopper beside his wife.

  ‘My dear, you’re late!’ Mrs James roared at Alex. ‘Come and meet Madame …’ She took Alex by the elbow and marched her towards a group of Indonesian military wives. ‘Ibus, my dear. Not much English. I’m relying on you to talk your bahasa,’ the General said as she swept Alex along.

  The five ladies turned and gave five lovely smiles as Alex was led forward; they fluttered five sandalwood fans and each took a sip of orange crush from the glass she was holding. ‘The military Ibus are the National Thought Police,’ Anthony used to say.

  The ladies, wives of majors and colonels, were heavily corseted beneath their sarongs; all wore the national hairstyle and gold earrings, gold bangles and gold rings. All were giggly.

  All, through the blessing of God, Who, except in a few, very unhappy cases, dispensed such things automatically for married women, had several children. None had anything in common with Alex who, being unmarried and unblessed, was their inferior. She could feel them guessing at her age.

  The topics that women of their class would normally discuss—business, import licences, ways of making oneself more sexually fascinating—were forbidden in front of an unmarried girl. Fans fluttered, gold bangles jingled, and there was silence.

  ‘May I see your palm, please?’ somebody asked at last. There was a sigh of relief. Everybody could talk about palmistry, horoscopes, even the spirit world—though Western people were notoriously arrogant about spirits.

  Bette James had gone to some effort to have her furniture arranged in intimate clusters, but this was not to the taste of the Ibus, who liked their chairs set in long straight lines. They beckoned houseboys and pointed their fans at the improperly placed chairs; the houseboys, glancing nervously towards Mim James, made long, straight lines of furniture. Alex and the Ibus sat down and palmistry began. There was much more giggling; the ladies grew intimate as they craned over each other’s shoulders, confirming past secrets of their lives which Ibu Sularto read in their hands, and taking delight in the obedient sons and joint-venture companies which she predicted for them. One of the women had married a Christian, but her family was powerful and her husband had converted to Islam and had even been circumcised at the age of twenty-three in order to marry her … All these things Ibu Sularto mentioned, causing more giggling.

  ‘What is your religion?’ she asked Alex.

  ‘I was born a Christian.’

  The Ibu dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘Did you know,’ she asked, ‘that communists do not believe in God? That is how you can identify them.’

  The other wives exchanged glances and Ibu Sularto continued, ‘The communists murdered our six hero generals and threw their bodies in the Crocodile Hole.’ Dropping her voice still lower, so that only Alex could hear, she murmured, ‘The communists cut off their …’ vaguely indicating her lap ‘… and pulled out their eyes. Thanks be to God that their coup failed! And that the people rose to crush them! The people swore to kill one hundred thousand communists for every murdered hero …’ Her eyes narrowed and she repeated the number. ‘In six more weeks it
will be a year since the murders at the Crocodile Hole, since General Nasution’s little daughter was shot dead. They shot to death a five-year-old child …’

  Alex nodded. What the woman said was true, but it was a truth that held no force for her: she could not share their hatred of the communists. Like a bystander at a street brawl she could only be appalled by both sides.

  ‘There are now other elements,’ Ibu Sularto continued. The wives nodded.

  ‘Yes?’ Alex asked.

  ‘Elements who are against progress, who are against a modern State. Those elements are becoming very active. But we trust to God.’

  ‘God will crush them,’ others agreed, and, smiling like angels and fluttering their sandalwood fans, for it was very hot, the ladies went to the buffet where they giggled and patted each other and looked coolly at Naida who had come late to the party and who was not wearing national dress.

  ‘Your hair is so short—it looks like bamboo shoots,’ Alex overheard one say to Naida. They nodded to Eileen, who was with Naida, and passed on.

  At ten, Alex sought out Bette and then Colonel James to say goodnight. The Colonel was in conversation with a plump Javanese man who had a permanent smile. ‘I understand that the whole conspiracy has been revealed,’ James was saying, grunting with satisfaction. ‘And that now …’ He had not seen Alex until she was beside him. He stopped abruptly. ‘Ah, well, Alex. Going already? What a pity. Kasian. Major Budiardjo and I were just talking about, oh, psy-war. Eh, Major?’

  The Major laughed heartily. Alex felt vaguely uneasy.

  ‘Well, well, not a subject for the ladies, eh, Major?’ James continued. He took Alex’s arm solicitously and steered her, as if she were a very old, very frail dependent, towards his front door.

  Her uneasiness was distracted as she went home. There were many more soldiers, more roadblocks and even armoured cars in the streets.

  ‘Any message for me?’ Alex asked Itji, who scrambled up from the floor to open the front door.

  Itji lowered her eyes. ‘Only Tuan Anthony came to collect his clothes.’

  ‘Did he leave a note for me?’

  ‘No note, Non.’

  Alex lay in bed, trying to summon the nerve to ring Maruli in the middle of the night. But she could not. She knew she would appear ridiculous. Even the servant had been embarrassed by her anxiety about him.

  It was another two days, the eve of Independence Day, before Maruli came.

  Alex arrived home for lunch and found the house apparently deserted. Bagong was not sweeping leaves in the front garden; no servant was waiting to greet her with a cool drink. She walked through the house, which seemed eerie with stillness and heat. Then from the kitchen she heard Itji’s laugh. They were all standing around the stove—Itji, dim-witted old Aminah, Bagong. And Maruli!

  He was cooking something, showing the servants how to do it.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ Alex said loudly.

  Itji and Aminah went into the shrieking fits they took whenever they were startled. ‘Tuan is making a surprise for lunch,’ they shrilled.

  The sleeves of Maruli’s blue shirt were rolled up and his skin was shiny with sweat; he had lost some weight and his face, being thinner, looked older but more vital. His eyes flashed on Alex out of their deep skull sockets, jolting her with nervousness.

  He, however, was calm. ‘I was feeling nostalgic,’ he said. ‘We are having some real Sumatran food.’

  He had prepared dishes unfamiliar to Alex—tender fronds of fern trees simmered in coconut milk, pineapple cooked with red chillis, and a dish of dark, highly-spiced meat. Itji was left in charge of the final preparation, and when she and Aminah brought the food to the table it included the festival dish—rice in the shape of a volcano, topped with a red chilli and surrounded by boiled eggs. Itji simpered as she set it down on the table.

  ‘Are we celebrating?’ Alex asked.

  Maruli was seated opposite her; he had not spoken much and seemed in a gentle, speculative mood. He nodded.

  The heat of the day had struck and spears of sunlight penetrated through the rattan blind and fell across the floor. It was quiet, for most people had already eaten and were asleep.

  ‘This is wedding rice,’ he added. ‘We are celebrating our marriage.’

  Alex felt tears starting. You shouldn’t make jokes like that.

  He saw her thought. ‘It’s not a joke. It’s a symbol,’ he said. ‘You are my wife. We should be in a pavilion, with palm fronds and young coconuts at the doorway, and dressed in cloth-of-gold, surrounded by relatives exchanging gifts and bringing money … But you are still my wife. I have brought you a wedding ring.’ He began to smile. ‘Your eyes light up! You shall have it later. I am extremely hungry—please eat.’

  He ate, as usual, with his fingers, quickly, almost furtively, like a predator anticipating challenge. Alex did not notice any more. She, too had learnt to eat with her fingers and to take the tiny green chillis, that stung like wasps if bitten carelessly, into the back of her mouth and to bite them there so that they exploded with a burning freshness. When she looked across at Maruli, she rested her eyes on the triangle of skin at his throat showing above his top shirt button. His skin looked as silky as polished mahogany. Staring at it, she forgot what she was going to say and asked instead, ‘Is there a special way for making love when you’re just married?’

  ‘Of course. For hours, in many different positions. Without modesty. With drama.’ He began to laugh. ‘Alex, you are only twenty-five. What happens when you’re thirty and becoming sexually ripe? You’ll kill me … Do you want, perhaps, not to marry me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good.’ Itji had taken their coffee to the sitting room and was padding around the lunch table, casting coy glances that signalled that they should leave the table. Maruli seemed in no hurry. He nursed his coffee, inhaling the steam. Alex had never seen him so relaxed; his mood invoked in her a deep tenderness and she thought, Now I do really love you. Before, it was only infatuation and excitement.

  At length he began to talk of his earlier life, about coming home after his first visit abroad—a year in Paris—and being horrified by traditions that had seemed before as normal as the rising of the sun. ‘My degree was in civil engineering. I was mad for the idea that hydro-electricity could supply the energy needed to industrialise North Sumatra. My uncles said, “Why should we use machines? What’s wrong with buffaloes? When they are old we can eat them. You can’t eat machines”. I think it was the worst time in my life … I had thought of my father as some kind of god. I was the eleventh son and he had always seemed very old and distant, and always engaged in matters of great importance, arbitrating on property disputes, presiding at festivals, deciding how many buffaloes must be sacrificed. Until I was twenty-five I had kissed his feet, without thinking. When I met him again I found he was a wilful old man whose ears were blocked to new ideas.’ He paused and glanced at Alex. ‘I couldn’t bear it. I no longer agreed with the traditional laws; I was a stranger among my own kinsmen. So I came to Djakarta, and politics. But now …’

  ‘But now you long to see them all again?’

  Maruli nodded. ‘I would like to take you there. The mountains are like black giants and mists roll up their chests in the evenings. In the cold season there are beautiful fruits to eat—very small mangoes, which you can’t buy in Djakarta, and durians. They are the most lascivious fruits—they have the texture of Camembert and the flavour of … apricots? Strawberries? Something like that. People say if you make love and eat durians at the same time you do not know which you are doing.’ He yawned and stretched. ‘Come, my cock is beginning to ache.’

  There was a large brown paper parcel on one of the bedside tables. ‘Your wedding ring,’ he said as he undressed. ‘Don’t open it now. It’s bad manners to open a gift in front of the giver.’ He began to step around the room, naked, taking the slow, sober strides of a warrior in the wayang play, holding his arms at chest level and making the hand-movement
s of the dance. Somehow, it was not funny, despite his nakedness and erect penis. He stood in front of the mirror and danced to his reflection, then beckoned her over to stand in front of him, entering her from behind.

  ‘You bend as sweetly as a bamboo,’ he said.

  Afterwards they bathed, not bothering to ask Itji for hot water, but using the cold water stored in the tiled bathroom. Alex washed more quickly than Maruli and returned first to the bedroom. She picked up the parcel, which was not tied but roughly wrapped in brown paper that had been used before. It weighed several pounds and Alex guessed it was books of poetry. She began to open it; it jingled. She pulled the paper off in a hurry: inside an inner layer of old newsprint lay an enormous gold necklace, designed to lie over a man’s shoulders. She laid it across her hands—it was very heavy and bulbous. Alex felt breathless as she weighed it. Something must be wrong for him to have given me this. It’s a tribal necklace—he can’t give it away, she thought.

  She had not heard Maruli enter the room.

  ‘You’ve opened it,’ he said. ‘I wanted you to wait.’ His eyes were hard. ‘Put it down, now. Later you can hide it where the servants won’t see it. One day I might ask for it back; I might have to sell it. But for the moment it is yours. Your wedding ring.’ He smiled suddenly and his eyes said, Don’t ask questions. He added, ‘I have some problems at the Pusat. It is better if you keep this—you have diplomatic privilege. Your house cannot be searched.’

  They embraced once more, then fell asleep at dusk. At around seven o’clock Alex awoke from Itji’s light tapping on the bedroom door. She sat up suddenly. The room was totally dark and cold from the air-conditioning, and outside were the noises of the night hawkers. Itji said it was unlucky to sleep from day into night, because evil spirits could enter one’s body.

  ‘Maruli, quick. Wake up. We’ve slept too long,’ Alex said.

  She reached over but the bed was empty. She switched on the light: he was gone. His clothes were gone. He had laid the circle of barbaric gold on the pillow beside her.