Drive-by Saviours

by Chris Benjamin

  Bumi shook his head.

  “I could have been an academic star you know,” Syam said. “I finished my Master’s when I was just twenty-one. I had full funding for a Ph.D.”

  Bumi nodded.

  “But I just couldn’t handle the intellectual masturbation anymore.”

  Bumi flinched at the word ‘masturbation.’

  “What’s wrong?” Syam asked.

  “Well, what does that mean?”

  Syam squinted at the boy.

  “What you just said,” Bumi said. “What does that mean?”

  “I’m sorry,” Syam said. “Can you remind me what it was I just said?”

  Bumi gritted his teeth and said, “Intellectual masturbation. I’ve never heard those words used together before. Is that an oxymoron?”

  Syam snorted and considered the question. “I suppose it could be,” he said, “if you consider sex unintelligent or intellect asexual. But my honest opinion, Bumi, is that neither is necessarily true, and the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Sex can be an intellectual endeavour. But I’m not sure I’d recommend it that way. And it’s certainly a learning experience, if you do it right.

  “Intellect, on the other hand, can be very sexy, and is often sexual, especially in academia. The sad thing is, the reason I didn’t pursue a Ph.D. is because the most rewarding part of the sex of intellect has been removed from academia, that is, the joy of learning together. So, now, instead of an orgy of learning, if you will, you have all these professors in a circle jerk—competing to see who can send their ejaculate the farthest.”

  Bumi pondered Syam’s awkward metaphor for a long moment. “Okay,” he finally said. “So you mean academics no longer work cooperatively. Instead they compete for success, of some sort…”

  Syam added, “Of a sort based on fame, and fame based on quantity of publications, more than quality of learning. And as I later realized, that quantity of publications is based on how well one’s theories fit into the national dictum of order and Indonesia’s Great Manifest Destiny.”

  Syam’s mind was walking on long un-trodden ground now. “I wish you could have been around before Suharto,” he told the boy. “Those years were glorious!” He spoke with the certainty of one who’d been there. When Suharto first took power in 1966 he was eleven years old.

  SYAM WASN’T ROMANTICIZING THE PAST SO MUCH AS HIS PAST WAS romancing him, the same way his sweet Eni did before paranoia and the sticky pages of his secret journal stole his heart and mind. He remembered their intimacy as an open exchange of ideas about love, relationships, and applied physics. At first it was maybe too open as he gladly spilled long-guarded theories on Indonesia as an abused child, forced to grow up too soon after the communists—and even suspected communists—were all murdered. The same freedom fighters who snatched the country from the Japanese and Dutch quickly steered it into authoritarianism once their demands were met. Of course there was psychological damage, including chronic servitude to authority figures, particularly old men with overly prodigious appetites, like Suharto. Syam told Eni this on their first date, and judging from how quickly she said goodnight he was lucky the cops didn’t drag him away first thing next morning.

  But despite his leftist leanings and anti-authoritarian paradigm, his sweet sincerity and generosity with words charmed her. “Most men just give me sweets,” she told him. “You give me stories. And you want less in return.”

  “I would like to hear your stories,” he said.

  “It is an honour that you want to hear them. Most men are afraid of my words.”

  And so it came naturally that their conversations flowed from national to individual psychology, her long-time passion. In fact, it was his discussion of the impacts of abuse that engaged her first, because she wanted to become a counsellor working with abused children.

  He agreed with her on everything, especially child-rearing, that making babies was the godliest of work, that hitting them in any context was monstrous and uncivilized, that playing with them was essential to their healthy growth, that the ‘milk subsidy’ program giving food subsidies to poor mothers was divine until soiled by dirty politicians and then killed by puritans, that there is great potential for kindness and competence in every person, and at the same time a great capacity for cruelty and error—with parents being no exception despite their children’s divine expectations. She secretly agreed with him that Indonesians suffered from the abuse of their country but she preferred to maintain her personal health and well-being by not discussing politics.

  They were engaged within two months. They were married four months after that. Finally they were able to make love and truly apply the physics Syam had read so much about in his undergraduate courses. He had a gift for explaining the complexities of a chaotic universe and difficult theories concocted mostly by white men from places they’d never know or visit, and when he told her he would rather teach young Indonesians than further the theories of foreigners, she made no objection.

  They were dutiful in their love to each other and to their country, made love voraciously and frequently, made a child together and then Syam had his testes tied, because for them if two was enough, one was plenty. The supplemental joy of inspiring teenage student minds with a passion for knowledge and the pursuit of an ever-elusive truth filled Syam to a bursting point he’d never reached in his own youth. But never until Bumi had he encountered a match for his own mind, with the potential to even surpass it.

  By then Syam and Eni’s love had metamorphosed from mad mind-and-body mingled lovemaking to an early old-age insecurity. Eni worried that her husband no longer loved her and Syam worried about his position in Indonesian society. Though all he’d ever wanted was to teach he couldn’t help but wonder if in another time and place he’d have amounted to more, contributed something great to humanity’s body of knowledge—something miraculously helpful that never backfired or had unintended consequences.

  Saccharine ideology turned with time to a hint of rich bitterness and he longed for a wife with whom he could share not only personal details, but his thoughts on the collective humanity, its institutions and organizations, societies and styles, its cultures, and over it all, the shadow of strings pulled by faraway gigantic hands in a futile bid for material gains. He knew that she knew these things, intrinsically, and knew these thoughts to be in him, but she feared their consequences.

  And he feared her betrayal. What wife wouldn’t betray her husband for their child’s sake if his actions or thoughts or writings came to threaten the child? He loved her for her ability to implement every action plan and hypothesis they’d ever shared on parenthood, despised her for her rigidity. He sought her arms in the small morning hours after writing every regret in his journal hadn’t eased the feeling of being the only living entity in the middle of a vast deadness.

  “THINGS WERE ALIVE IN 1955,” SYAM TOLD BUMI, WHO NODDED, waiting impatiently for this latest history lesson to end. “The nation was young and its leaders were electric. Radio was broadcasting it all into urban homes. It was so exciting. Things are always exciting when they’re new.”

  “But you’ve told me yourself the leaders of that time, especially Sukarno, and of course Truman, were misguided megalomaniacs.”

  “Well, who isn’t a megalomaniac, given the chance?” Syam said. “We all think we have more control over things than we really do. The leaders just have a greater jurisdiction of delusion, so to speak.”

  “Or they’re just stupider.”

  “Really? You think your mathematical patterns would do a better job of running society? You think that our abstractions, in the right hands, could save the world?”

  “Sure they could! At least I can think of more than just money and limousines. Where have Suharto’s tangibles gotten us? That boneheaded monkey!”

  “Careful Bumi. Abstract thinking has given
us Newton’s laws but also slavery; the Holy Koran but also war. Funny to insult a monkey with Suharto’s name when humans are the only animals that kill their own kind in the name of religion or patriotism or free markets.”

  Bumi sucked his teeth on hearing Syam speak so antagonistically of ideas, the very things that had pulled the boy through the pain of abuse, abduction, abandonment, and a free-market education that was killing him. “If abstract thinking is so bad, why do you spend so much of your time practicing it, and preaching it to me?” he demanded.

  “Not bad, Bumi, just powerful, and therefore dangerous. Like any other tool, you can use it to build a bridge between two peoples, or you can use it to build a bomb. History has shown that bringing two peoples together is often the biggest cause of bomb-building. Anyway, I’m not saying you shouldn’t make use of abstract thinking, Bumi. What I’m saying is, more important in a leader or any other human being than his ability to think is what’s in his heart: his ability to empathize, to care, to love.”

  “You sound like a Christian,” Bumi said, more put off by the denigration of ideas than the niceties that followed. “Anyway I gotta go back to school.” He was expected for the first class of the afternoon and it was a relief for him to escape Syam, who had become, in recent months, stranger and more cantankerous. Where once he was a kind and gifted tutor, he had recently become an overbearing father-figure. Bumi’d had enough of father figures.

  Outside Syam’s door and into the alley Bumi ran headlong into Hafied, Syam’s ten-year-old son. Bumi’s shoulder hit Hafied on the forehead and his elbow connected to Hafied’s jaw, dropping the boy hard onto the pavement. Bumi sneered down with contempt and jealousy at the younger boy, three years and two feet his junior. Hafied had everything Bumi didn’t: a family living in their own environment, with abundant books and intellectual discussions everywhere and all the time. The worst of it, though, was that the little imp wasted the opportunity Bumi could never have, and cared only about football, kicking and juggling and playing with a round ball. Looking down at the bloodied nose of his junior nemesis gave him his first satisfaction of the day. “Sorry,” he said with a half-smile.

  “It’s okay,” Hafied said cheerily, popping back up unassisted. This was the runt’s true evil, his charming cutie-pie smile in the face of bloodied nose, grumpy elders, oppressive dictators, WWIII. “I get bloody noses all the time; it’s no big deal.”

  “Uh-huh.” Bumi walked around him, resisting the urge to push him back down.

  “Where you going?”

  “School,” Bumi answered, then added, to his own surprise, “Wanna come?” He cringed in disbelief at the betrayal uttered by his own mouth.

  “Sure!” Most kids would be jealous if their father’s attention was as diverted to another boy as Syam’s had been for five years, but Hafied always treated Bumi like an enigmatic older brother. Now was his chance, his first and likely only chance, to make friends. “I have to ask my dad though.”

  “Your dad told me it was okay,” Bumi said, smiling inwardly, now understanding what his mouth had in mind all along: revenge. He was sick of Syam’s cranky lectures. The man was impossible to please.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, he said he could use a break from you today anyway.” Bumi was inflicting the big-brother cruelty he’d never used on his sister, hitting the kid with intermittent reward and punishment: you get to hang out with me, but only because your dad doesn’t like you. Still, and maddeningly, Hafied smiled and agreed to come along. Bumi told the boy more of how his father was frustrated by Hafied’s lack of intelligence and obsession with football. The boy didn’t seem to get it. It bounced off him, deflected back to Bumi, and put him in an increasingly dangerous mood.

  IN THE YEARS SINCE THEY’D BEEN BROUGHT TO MAKASSAR, THE children of Rilaka had gained some freedom. As long as they showed up for class, they were free to come and go in the afternoons, within the city limits. They were even given enough spending money to cover bus fare and an occasional treat, like a trip to see a movie. While Bumi had grown to loathe the Indonesian novel, he loved home-grown movies like Komando Samber Nyawa, Jaka Sembung & Bergola Ijo and Hell Raiders. Their plots were as inconsistent and inaccurate as the novels, but they always revolved around an anti-colonial sentiment, usually with some handsome hero versus the evil Dutch, that Bumi had no trouble getting behind, regardless of the hypocrisy of its sources.

  Truancy was minimal by then. Even Bumi had accepted fate and realized that Rilaka was in his past. Going back would cause his family more trouble than joy, and the thought of seeing Alfi and Win only to leave again, or seeing Yusupu’s continued decline, frightened him.

  In his last visit to Yusupu, years before, the man had been more broken and lethargic than ever, and the news of home had all been bad. It included the death of Bumi’s grandfather, the great betel quid chewer. Although Yusupu had slowed his paces and eased his temper, he had become increasingly unfocused and distracted.

  Bumi could no longer stand to watch time and his family run together, always away from him. Although he crossed through the market weekly on his way to his tutorial with Pak Syam, and although he would often make a brief visit to Arum and Pram, years before he had given up visiting the fishmongers from home. Most of his classmates had done the same.

  Bumi, with Hafied in tow, flagged a bus in the market near Syam’s house, skipping his planned visit with Pram. There was no longer time because he’d spent so long listening to Syam ramble. The bus rambled through the familiar city sights of fowl and sheet metal houses, bums with burns on their bodies, the dirty Losari Harbour, and perpetual scores of vans, cars, and two-stroke motor bikes. The sights that had once thrilled Bumi seemed so commonplace now. All that caught his eye were advertisements. Slim models sold cigarettes, candy and diet pills. Signs erected by Suharto’s friends hawked everything from flour to automotive parts, and most disconcerting: hygiene products with those amplified bacteria, and the creams to kill them.

  Looking at those bacterial blow-ups he felt great fear. If Bumi had money to buy creams he would have done so, but since Pram and Arum had developed their own successful (by street merchant terms) business making and selling sarongs without Bumi’s assistance, he had little money. He tried to share his fears with Hafied. “Imagine,” he said, pointing to one of the passing adverts. “Those live in your skin.” Hafied took it as a joke and laughed politely. He cooed softly under his breath with barely concealed ecstasy over his big bus trip. He usually walked to school and had no cause to take a bus.

  They walked into Bumi’s afternoon geography class three minutes late, and were greeted with a scornful glare from Pak Guntur, who was unsure whether to punish Bumi for his latest tardiness or his uninvited guest. Starting with the latter, he barked, “Who’s this?” Guntur admired Bumi’s great intelligence and wanted to like him, but the boy was simply too much trouble.

  “This is my friend Hafied,” Bumi said with false pride.

  “What is he doing here, Bumi?”

  Bumi’s classmates snickered at his latest antics until Guntur corrected them sharply: “Bumi is not funny, children; he is sad, and should be pitied.”

  This information was a pinprick in Hafied’s bubble of admiration for his older friend, and he belligerently informed Guntur, “He should not be pitied. He should be admired. My daddy says he is the smartest Indonesian since they killed the communists.”

  Guntur went white and his bottom lip started to quiver with spittle pouring out from under his tongue. “Outside. Now!” he shouted.

  Bumi’s rebellious teenage heart betrayed him then, sold him out and temporarily stopped beating as his testosterone level dropped to zero. His legs gave out. He hit the floor and his classmates laughed at him. Bumi was dragged from the classroom by his ears. Hafied rushed after Guntur wailing, “What’s the matter with Bumi?”

  Outside the classroom G
untur dragged Bumi to his feet and smacked his face. Bumi’s heart started again and he felt the pain of blood rushing to his cheek. “Pak,” he said, “what did I do?” In desperation he feigned complete innocence.

  “Who is this boy?” Guntur demanded, confused and angry, wanting answers. “Why did you bring him here?”

  “He’s my friend Pak Syamsuddin’s son. I just thought he’d like to see where I go to school.”

  “Doesn’t he have his own school?”

  “Yes, Pak, but I wanted to show him something different.”

  Guntur glanced down to see a sniffling Hafied at his heel. He grabbed the child by the ear and pulled him next to Bumi against the wall. He raised his hand to Hafied, who flinched. Hafied had never been beaten. Guntur dropped his hand, squatted and looked Hafied in the eye. “Son,” he said. “Where did you learn about communists?” Children weren’t supposed to know about such things anymore.

  “I don’t know anything about communists,” Hafied said. “Just that Bumi is smart like them, but they aren’t around anymore.” This much he had clearly overheard from Syam, who didn’t discuss such matters with his family.

  “And where did you hear that?”

  Hafied hesitated and looked up at Bumi. Bumi looked away as Guntur pulled Hafied’s face back to his. “Where?” Guntur whispered.

  “My daddy said it,” Hafied whispered.

  “Who is your daddy, Son?”

  “Pak Syamsuddin Ramelan. He’s a teacher at my school,” the boy confessed with reluctant pride.

  Bumi tried to hold his head up, without shame, as if he still had no idea what the matter was. “Pak Syamsuddin is my tutor,” he offered.

  “Is your tutor a communist sympathizer, Bumi?” asked Guntur.

  “What’s a communist sympathizer?”