Finally, he dove between Grandpa’s bow legs and found himself tangled in Alfi’s boiling limbs, his face against her rubbery face. He screamed a soundless scream and woke up with a quiet jolt in the hot dry morning, sweating a river over soaked sheets. He consoled himself with a reminder that the dream could have been worse, it could have been one of the usual dreams of numbers, germs, counting, washing, and chasing after unaccounted-for strangers. It had been a sounder sleep than usual.
It was Yaty who gave Bumi the news that the neighbour’s son, an occasional playmate of Bunga and Baharuddin, had been found dead. Bumi tried to separate his dream from the reality of the dead boy, who was found bloated and drowned in his own vomit.
When Bumi had time to consider the unknown cause of death he was visited by the most disturbing of all the bizarre ideas he’d ever had: it was he who had killed the child. He knew in fact it was not his doing. He had no real memory of committing the heinous crime and there was no evidence that foul play was involved.
Still, it could have been him. Perhaps he had given the boy a dirty look across the fence one day that somehow led to heart failure, or perhaps an ill thought about the child and his family had strayed into the night and committed the foul deed. Maybe it was his dream that had put murderous demons in the child’s heart. That thought tortured Bumi’s head, chest and guts with its constant visits. He would logic it away and turn his thoughts elsewhere, only to find it standing once again in his mind’s path with counter-arguments. “No evidence of foul play, but no evidence of anything else either,” it teased. There had been no illness forewarning the presence of paddengngeng, the invisible Buginese horsemen of death, yet the four-year-old child was banished to the Land of the Dead, an island in the far west, to await Judgment.
Bumi found it impossible to disprove the accusations of his twisted mind so he did all he could to repent and to assuage his painful guilt. He helped in the ritual bathing of the body and even contributed to the family’s fee to the keeper of the heartland, paid via the local mosque, from his meagre resources. These traditions meant little to him because Rilaka’s dead are bathed and buried by the sea, and recycled by the sharks. At school he had been taught to worship Allah, but any spirituality that lingered in his muddled scientific mind was of a more Animist nature. Having once known paradise on earth he had little use for a Supreme God or unknown future Heaven. He had, however, learned to hide his anger at God and it was never noticed or condemned by any human authority.
In helping his neighbours mourn and move forward he felt a connection to them for the first time in seven years living with Yaty’s family. He felt that connection watching Bunga tell wide-eyed Baharuddin about the small dead boy, and how they had been playing together near the canal just the other day, and now he was gone. Bumi envisioned his life as a factory drone without these two small wonders awaiting his return home each evening, and he felt connected to his community in fear. The connection intensified his guilt and the tempo of his ritualistic mental dance.
A team of highly educated, specialized and extensively trained doctors with a combined hundred years’ experience in different elements of the human body could not explain the boy’s death. They autopsied, probed and pulled apart what remained of an innocent life-form and could not trace the source of evil. Bumi’s brother-in-law, with his giant intellect and hulking size and his wide web of loquacious political connections, availed their considerable resources to smoke out the nefarious rat.
Surely Bumi would be caught and punished any moment. He tried to convince himself to confess and then countered that he hadn’t actually done it. He decided that if indeed he was guilty he would be caught and properly punished, and that would only be fair.
It wasn’t long before Robadise came knocking on Bumi’s bedroom door. Having raised ballyhoo with all the neighbourhood bullies and found no signs of foul play among the young boy’s friends, Robadise entered the private abode of his sister and brother-in-law in the full uniform of the local law, his gun dangling, aligned with the stripe of his pants.
Upon Robadise’s arrival Bumi was engrossed in an illegal translation of de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America and longing severely for a nation that had use for his ideas. Bumi marked his page and with a raw, reddened hand gestured toward the old La-Z-Boy in the corner.
Yaty and her family had long since become accustomed to Bumi’s eccentricities: his incessant purification rituals that crossed the line toward self-abuse; his long morning routine of dressing, undressing, and redressing multiple times until he got it just right, which left him still somehow slovenly. His use of elbows and feet instead of hands, which were often protected in plastic bags; his strange and complex series of patterned twitches; his silly way of walking on the street, touching every post, and spinning and wiggling as he entered the house; and his harassment of strangers as they passed on foot, writing down their names and purposes or fretting inconsolably if they refused to provide the information. Even this room was forbidden to all but himself, his wife, and Robadise, and Yaty did her best with her rare and precious time to maintain it ‘just so’ for him.
Besides the rituals were his late-night streams of audible profanity at whatever demons he was wrestling, his red bleary eyes, his vicious abuse of inanimate objects. These were tolerable and to be expected from someone of his genius, as long as he never laid hand to the children or his wife. The family was on a conscientious watch in case the focus of Bumi’s abuse shifted from inanimate objects to human family members, which would result in swift banishment to the deepest, darkest corner of the most hideous penal institution Robadise could lay claim.
Despite Bumi’s rage and twisted idiosyncrasies, Yaty and the children gazed upon his face with eyes filled only with awe and love. After his ten-hour shift he’d chase them through the house, build swords for them out of wood, wrestle with and toss them high, make up epic stories of gallantry and justice for them, all the usual fatherly demonstrations of unconditional love. He knew that life was hard for Yaty, and he didn’t make it any easier with his strange habits and weird sense of order. Rather than complain, Yaty learned his ways well and kept things the way he liked them. In return he massaged her sore feet and hands and kissed her with a tenderness he only felt in her presence.
Here in the room where they still found time to make love at a far better than average frequency and clean up after themselves afterward, Bumi’s one-time best friend, childhood companion and now brother-in-the-law sat like a Lieutenant-Governor or a French Naval Captain, face grave and eyes unsmiling, and prepared to pick at Bumi’s mis-wired brain.
“So Brother, crazy about our neighbour’s little boy, ya?” he began.
“Insane,” Bumi agreed nervously.
“An evil thing,” Robadise opined.
“Evil?” Bumi questioned.
“Don’t you think? I mean how else would you describe the death of an innocent, one who had never hurt anyone? To die so suddenly and inexplicably. What would you call it, Bumi, if not evil?”
Bumi was uncertain which question to begin with but he feared the tone of this komodo-of-a-brother. “Tragic,” he muttered quietly, thinking, he knows it was me and now he just has to get my confession, or prove it somehow.
“That’s remarkably objective of you,” Robadise replied, shifting his policemen’s belt. “So, what do you think caused it?”
Whatever theories were swirling about Bumi’s brain, and there were always theories swirling in there, he didn’t much care to share them with Robadise, particularly his own fears that perhaps, somehow, he himself was the culprit. Bumi held tightly to his irrational fears and obsessions, and almost as tightly to his more rational ideas. He had learned in six years of fatherhood that knowledge and ideas come at a cost. They came easily, but in Indonesia they didn’t come cheap. You read a few books and engaged in lively debate or conversations with your mates, drew out the thought
s of your exhausted spouse late at night, observed the events of your life and the events of those living around you, and came up with theories to explain all these things and the connections between them—or reasons behind them, that fit the facts as you saw them and experienced them. But if any of these theories happened to offend those in power and you happened to divulge such theories, bad things could happen. God help you if you lived your life in such a way, like Pram did, that contradicted the theories of those in power.
Bumi had learned this the hard way and had made a concerted effort to live his life in the safest Indonesian way. He responded to the calls for prayer; he made his Friday visits to the mosque; he helped his neighbours when they had need; and he even had a vasectomy soon after the birth of his second child. These were expected of a good Muslim in Makassar.
The only risk Bumi took was keeping his book collection, which he knew stood as potential evidence that he thought in ways contrary to expectations. He took what precautions he could, stored the books in obscure locations, behind panels, under clothing in drawers, propping up desks if necessary. The text of any book on Suharto’s extensive banned list would pass before Bumi’s eyes and into his brain within hours, late at night, and become fuel soon afterward. These practices he first learned from Pak Syam, but unlike Syam he lacked the means, charm and time to keep his enemies onside with subtle and minor bribes of kindness. He was too busy keeping the universe in check with his scientific rituals to worry about the small-minded and almost powerless idiots of the world around him. It was only the strangers wandering around his turf that worried him, until he figured out their purposes and missions.
Bumi did endeavour to enhance certain security practices and, on the advice of Robadise, had burned several philosophical journals of his thoughts on how best to organize societies. Robadise knew the art of covering one’s trail frontward and backward and explained that only the most foolish criminals keep true records of their transactions, so Bumi’s old journal was replaced with occasional minor opuses to the military and political genius of Indonesia’s elite.
But Robadise’s aim was more precise than all that. He repeated his question, interrupting Bumi’s fearful thoughts. “Bumi, what do you think caused the boy’s death?”
Robadise would never accept or believe, “I don’t know.” Bumi admitted that he had given the matter some thought. As a diversion he confessed the dream he’d had about Alfi, his long-ago abandoned sister.
Robadise pulled out his police-issued notepad and pencil and scratched some notes before saying, “Bah, that’s just your own guilt, Bumi. Your own regret. I don’t know why you don’t just return to Rilaka and see them. Anyway it’s nothing to do with this boy. Please help me solve this case. Everyone is in a panic. There’s a killer loose here.”
Bumi shook his head and took a deep breath, relieved that Robadise didn’t seem to suspect him, and dismayed at his old friend’s new simplicity. He wanted to ask him, the one who’d saved him from the headmaster’s persecution in school, how he had become so simplistic. “Not everything boils down to good and evil,” he told Robadise, believing it in his head if not his heart. “Not every crime has a culprit, regardless of your police training.”
Robadise rose red-faced, cheeks puffed, towering over Bumi, chest thrust forward. He exhaled sharply, turned, walked toward the door. Over his shoulder he said, “Give it some more thought, Brother. With a brain like yours I’m sure you can find the culprit. I’m sure you’ll help your brother.” He closed the door behind him.
“It’s not a crime,” Bumi said softly to the closed door, “just a tragedy.” He prayed to Allah to absolve his sins. A new thought was seeded in his brain: perhaps one of those strangers who refused to provide their names and purposes was the true villain. Or maybe one of the other strangers who gave their names and purposes was a liar, and had come to murder children.
THE NEXT MORNING A SECOND CHILD, A FIVE-YEAR-OLD GIRL WHO lived a few streets away, began choking soon after her breakfast and died en route to the hospital. Her autopsy showed no signs of poisoning or abuse. She had simply stopped breathing. Although there were no signs of foul play Robadise was convinced that a serial killer was loose. He convinced his father, a high-ranking member of the local force, that it was the only explanation.
Bumi prayed with increasing frequency and length, having no other recourse or way to disprove his worst suspicions of himself. Yaty watched him at night in their bed with that sad, tired, flat look on her face. “It’ll be alright,” he’d say, convincing neither of them.
Special forces were deployed from all over the city, as well as the nearby township of Mariso, to find the killer. “Will they find him?” Bumi asked Robadise.
“I’ve been a cop for eight years,” Robadise said. “This is my first chance to do something great. This is not about personal gain.”
In the evenings Bumi observed Robadise from a distance as he and his colleagues scoured the neighbourhood for clues. Robadise gave occasional updates to the family. They ruthlessly interrogated suspicious characters including homeless glue zombies, a suspected union organizer and even a couple of flyover Dutch tourists on their way to beautiful Manado. They found no evidence, no clues, but they were undeterred. They were ready to start bashing heads.
Robadise was no longer the happy-go-lucky fool’s sage who was satisfied to suck corruption’s teat. “Brother,” Bumi pleaded, “surely there is a better way to use your energies than projecting villainy on your own people. Perhaps you could write a mystery novel?”
This advice earned him a quick pinning to the floor, Robadise’s dormitory way of demonstrating his power. Through gritted teeth he warned Bumi, “This is no game. Children are dying and you can either put your brains to practical use, for once, or tease like some panty-wearing schoolgirl.” His sweat dripped from his forehead onto Bumi’s tight lips and remained there long after his departure from Bumi’s room.
Yaty discovered him on the floor an hour later. He was heaving great sobs that jarred his entire body. “Have you finally gone completely mad?” she said. “Please stay strong. Your family needs you.”
“It’s my family that’s gone mad,” he told her with more authority than he felt. “At least the part of it that was once my brother.”
Still he feared all those unidentified faces passing their gates every day, and the more hazy ones who came by when he was away. Allah knew he had tried to identify them all, but in a city the size of Makassar it was impossible. He had failed the neighbourhood, failed his family.
Yaty helped Bumi scrub her brother’s sweat and other contaminants from his body and led him to bed, where he slept fitfully in between pacing, checking the alarm, peeking out the window, worrying about Robadise and watching his children sleep. Maybe they too would fall victim to the child-killer, whomever or whatever it was.
These thoughts crippled him until five o’clock, an hour before the alarm, when he shook Bunga awake. “Did you know this girl who died?” he whispered.
“Yes, Daddy, she was in my class. But we didn’t play together. I’m sorry but I didn’t like her much. She was very bossy and she thought she could boss me even though she was just a littler kid.”
“Can you tell me anything else about her, Child?” he prodded.
“Not really, Daddy. Why? Did I do something wrong?”
“No, Child, of course not. Do you think you did something wrong?”
“No, Daddy, I’ve been good. I’m a good girl.” She flashed her patented heart-melt smile and it had the desired effect. Her poor daddy smiled.
“I know you’re a good girl,” he assured her. “Just make sure you are very careful nowadays. I don’t want anything to happen to you. For the next little while you come straight home after school and stay close to your grandma.”
“But why, Daddy?”
“These are dangerous times, Child. I
don’t know why those two kids have died, but the police are everywhere now. Anyway, it’s dangerous right now, it seems. Just be careful.”
His concern, stress and frustration were obvious even to a small child. She kissed his cheek and put her arms around his neck so as to crush such negative emotions with gratitude and love, and she succeeded. He kissed her eyelids signifying that the moratorium on night-time rousers was over, and it was once again time for her to sleep.
THE THIRD CHILD TO DIE WAS MOHAMMED, ONE OF BUNGA’S closest friends. The first two deaths had troubled and fascinated her. Mohammed’s death changed her. She stopped speaking. She wouldn’t eat, despite the constant placement of food to her lips by her grandmother and questions to her ears by Robadise and his reluctant accomplice, Bumi.
Yaty issued a cease and desist order to the two men. “Give the child space to breathe, if not to mourn,” she admonished them, and the volume of her words made them temporary law.
For three nights Yaty held her child and soothed her with gentle cooing. For three days Bumi lived in the torture chamber of his mind, arguing with himself about the cause of death: himself, some other maniac or some non-human cause. For three days Yaty’s mother, Ibu Eni, quietly prepared Bunga’s favourite dish, gado-gado, more than the whole family could eat for supper.
On the fourth day when the child ate half her plate of gado-gado, her nenek congratulated her with a suffocating hug, enveloping the little one with the many folds and flaps of her old body. Bunga squirmed and pushed and struggled her way free and cried, “I want to go play at the canal.” To her nenek’s puzzled gaze she explained, “Mohammed may be there waiting for me.”
Drive-by Saviours Page 13
