A Fortune-Teller Told Me

by Tiziano Terzani

  This, to be sure, was a clever way for the dukun-landowners to terrorize potential thieves. But could it not also have been a response to people’s natural desire for justice and harmony?

  I would probably never again have a chance of seeing a dukun close to death, so I ventured to ask the question that had been on my mind since I stepped inside the house: “Are you afraid of death?”

  “I don’t know … I know only that in the course of my life I’ve seen spirits of all types. I’ve seen spirits of old women with long white hair, I’ve seen the ghosts of animals, I’ve seen the ghosts of the sea that sometimes invade the bodies of fishermen when they are out on their boats. I’ve seen many strange things, and I expect to see more … even after,” he replied.

  His wife was getting worried, afraid I might be another expert on black magic who had come to steal some secrets from her husband. In her way she was right, and I apologized to her. The old man was sorry I had to go, and wanted to give me his blessing. One more would do me no harm.

  The driver had parked the car in front of the district infirmary, and the head doctor, responsible for the whole area, happened to be there. What did he think of the dukuns? People believed in them, he said, and that was enough. With normal medicines he could cure a fever in a few days, but a dukun could sometimes do it in minutes, and people preferred going to a dukun rather than the infirmary. He himself, when he took up this post, went to pay his respects to the dukun. “He owns the land, so he has control over the ghosts. Here everything works by a different logic from the one I learned at university, but it’s a logic all the same. So where does that leave me? I work here, and I have to believe what the people believe.”

  When I reached the port the ship for Jakarta had just pulled away from the quay, ten hours behind schedule. A woman stood at one of the kiosks that sold drinks, weeping desperately. Taking advantage of the long stopover, she had gone to Tanjung Pinang to do some shopping, and when she returned the gangplanks had already been taken up. All her baggage, documents and money were on the ship. The director of the Pelni Lines in Kijian scolded her severely and talked about discipline. He said his firm was not responsible and she would have to deal with the problem herself. Then he suddenly became very kind and offered to lend her the price of an air ticket to Jakarta: she would arrive before the ship, and would recover her things. She could send him the money by post. “This is not a problem of the Pelni Lines, but it is a human problem and I am responsible for everything here, even human problems,” he said ironically and kindly, turning to me and giving me a wink of complicity.

  Black-rimmed spectacles, a felt peaked cap and gold braid like that of an American admiral, a thin drooping mustache and a wide mouth full of big white teeth, Evert Bintang had sailed to all the corners of the earth. He spoke Dutch, the language of the colonizers, but he had no respect for them. “They were here for three hundred years, and what did they leave? Palm trees!” he said, pointing to a row of their beautiful crowns against the sky. He also spoke excellent English, and had clear-cut ideas about the women of different countries. The Italians? Splendid. The Spanish? Seductive. The French? Professional. As for Nordic women, however, they were horrible, the lot of them. “It’s the skin … that white skin gives me the creeps,” he said.

  Given that he helped everyone, could he help me, too? I had a ticket for Jakarta, but I wanted to go in the opposite direction, to Medan. “No problem,” he said. Turning to the crowd that had gathered to watch the woman’s trouble and then my own—dockworkers, passengers, motorcycle-taxi drivers, soldiers and fat policemen with rusty pistols at their hips—he announced: “This man is not only a guest of the Pelni Lines, he is a guest of our country. So: red carpet!” He mimed unrolling a very long one in front of my feet. Everybody laughed. He took my ticket, called a young assistant, whispered something in his ear and off he went.

  I adore these characters—braggarts and ham actors and even scoundrels, but basically warmhearted. I adore the theatrical aura they create around themselves, the intrigue, the words whispered in the ear of someone who comes and immediately goes, wads of cash passing from hand to hand like stolen goods, and finally the slap on the shoulder, the grin after the booming voice, the rolling eyes and menacing gestures.

  Evert Bintang was born in 1939 in north Celebes. He joined the anti-Communist youth and in 1957, with a group of extreme right-wing guerrillas, went into the jungle to fight against the left-wing regime of President Sukarno. In 1962 he was granted amnesty, enrolled in the commandos and was sent first to Irian Jaya to fight the separatists, and then to Celebes “to root out the Communists,” this time by order of the government. “I was at home there,” he told me. “I knew the area, I knew every path because I had myself been a guerrilla, and we didn’t let a single Communist escape. We caught them, we tied them up and threw them into the sea. We loved our country and we were ready for anything to keep it from falling into the hands of the Communists,” he explained. He had married a woman from Sumatra and this “mixture,” as he called his marriage, had produced “eight true Indonesians.”

  The problem with Indonesia, he said, was that if the central government allowed the people even a little freedom the country would immediately split into ten different republics, because they all want to be independent: the Bataks, the inhabitants of Acheh and of the Moluccas … “And so we’d end up like the Soviet Union or Yugoslavia.”

  He was not mistaken. Today’s Indonesia is an empire held together and dominated by the Javanese, who hold the key positions in the army and the civil administration. They realize that the strength of Indonesia depends on its remaining united. Hence the military dictatorship, hence the instant brutal use of violence against any dissent or any demand for greater autonomy. Hence the occupation of Timor, the Portuguese territory in the middle of the archipelago, and the repression of the local independence movement. For the Indonesians of the other islands the problem of national cohesion has little importance—they do not see far beyond their own village. But the Javanese are determined to hold the country together, and are relying on time to create a stronger feeling of unity among the people.

  Evert Bintang told me he was a Protestant. He came close to my ear and whispered: “We’re a minority, but we’ve a future! Now that we’ve saved this country of ours from the Communists we certainly don’t want it to fall into the hands of the Islamic fundamentalists!” He seemed ready to pick up his rifle again, to tie up all the fundamentalists and throw them into the sea. “As Indonesians we believe in the five principles of Pancha Sila, and that is enough for us. The first principle is: ‘All Indonesians must believe in God. The second …’” and here he got stuck. Luckily, in the huddle of people around us there was a boy fresh out of school who mechanically reeled off the rest of the principles: “Humanism, unity of the Indonesians, democracy and socialism.”

  “Right,” said my director, “even socialism. Yes, because we don’t want unrestrained liberalism of the American kind. But the important thing is that the first principle says to believe in God—without saying which God, however. It means that Indonesia is a country with different religions, not only Islam. Not only Islam, do you follow?” he said, with a sinister gleam in his eye. “We’re an archipelago of 13,677 islands, large and small, with 186 million Indonesians who believe in the five principles of Pancha Sila. No way do we want to make Indonesia into an Islamic country, but it must be a great country—a great, very great country indeed!” He reached a peak of fervor. “And don’t forget, foreigner, that the sun rises on our side, that east is east and west is west and never the twain shall meet. You Westerners work a lot with your heads, but you often forget the heart. But we … well, never mind. The sun rises here and one day we’ll rule the world, because we’ve all we need to do it. We’ve land, we’ve people, we’ve resources.” Then he added, “Even if we’re lazy and stupid!” He laughed. “Foreigner, look at the sun and you’ll understand. In Norway for six months of the year you don’t see the s
un, not once. We have it twelve hours a day. We have splendid views of the sun: the sun rising, the sun setting. In Norway, nothing, none of all this! The sun will never rise in the west. Never. So remember, foreigner: the future is here!”

  The sun, his sun, was preparing one of its splendid picture-postcard sunsets, a flaming sky behind the black silhouettes of the palms. A melancholy Indonesian song, blaring at full volume from speakers on board, announced my ship’s arrival: a big, beautiful yellow and white vessel filled to overflowing with people who trundled down the gangplanks in a never-ending stream—beautiful, slim women in brightly colored sarongs, men in batik shirts and black caps. “Pinang … Pinang … Pinang,” yelled the taxi drivers, motorcyclists and minibus drivers, tugging people by the arm, trying to grab baggage or children out of their hands to get them as customers. Oh, yes, this was the East, all right!

  I thought of Singapore, which I had left barely a few days before and which already seemed so far away, as if on another planet. To me this world was beautiful—a world of cardboard boxes tied with string, bundles, embraces, pushing and shoving, problems solved between people and not between computers, with lots of superfluous words and gestures, but with more feelings, fewer laws, fewer rules; a world where a director-patriot-philosopher-murderer at a kiosk on the harbor-front generously offers drinks to all his friends, to his assistants, to a woman who has missed her ship for Jakarta, and to me, a foreigner.

  With a fresh ticket in my hand I boarded the ship. I was bound for Medan.

  16/HURRAY FOR SHIPS!

  The ship was a real joy: built about thirty years previously in a Hamburg shipyard, it had wooden decks, cabins with portholes, a restaurant, a ballroom, a bar, a mosque and a church. In sum it was a ship the way they used to be, a ship like a little city to explore, to walk from one end to the other, to climb from deck to deck, to stand at the rail watching the horizon, to scan the passengers for an interesting face, for someone to talk to.

  We sailed among small deserted islands covered in palm trees. The sky and sea glowed like copper as the last rays of light grazed the earth. The spectacle had something religious about it. Passengers stood on the decks enjoying the beauty of nature gliding past, and with them stood the sailors in blue uniforms, the officers in white, the stewards in black trousers and red jackets with brass buttons, all silent.

  Soon it was the hour of prayer. Then dinnertime.

  What a wonderful invention, ships! Of course, I am told, they are bound to disappear for “market reasons,” because they no longer pay. That is how our world works, and so we deprive ourselves of one more pleasure. In the end we shall even get rid of women! Inventions of God! Of course, we shall do without them the day we find a way to make children more cheaply in test tubes without waiting nine months, the day we find there is no longer a “market” for love, and men can stick their willies in a machine electronically programmed to satisfy all desires with no risk of diseases—a machine that will ask nothing for itself, except money.

  Hurray for ships! With their puffing and sighing and shuddering as they meet the caress of the waves, the embrace of the sea, ships have a human feel. Let us keep them alive as a token of love, to make the last romantics happy. Let us use them to cure the depressed. Let us prescribe sea journeys for those who can no longer bear the burden of life, who feel suffocated and see no reason to carry on. Think what we shall save on pills—no more Valium and Prozac!

  After dinner I went out on the stern and lay down on the wooden deck looking up at the sky. My gaze lost in infinity, I felt as if thanks to that Hong Kong fortune-teller I was rediscovering not only the pleasure of travel but that of life itself. Gone was the anxiety; no longer did I feel the passing of the days to be fraught with drama. I listened to those who spoke to me and enjoyed what was happening around me; I had leisure to put my impressions in order, to reflect. Time and silence—so necessary, so natural—have by now become luxuries which only a few can afford. That is why depression is on the increase.

  In my case it started in Japan, where life was a constant rush, packed with obligations, every relationship difficult and strained. I never had—or thought I never had—a moment to catch my breath; never a moment when I did not feel guilty because of something else I should have been doing. When I got up in the morning I felt the weight of the world on my shoulders; there were days when just seeing the pile of newspapers under my door was enough to make my gorge rise.

  In Japan the whole society is in a straitjacket, the people are always playing a part and can never behave naturally. Just being there was oppressive, but I was also paying the price of my bizarre trade, journalism. A foreign correspondent always has to be where there is some drama taking place, and one cannot spend years observing failed revolutions, unsolved crimes, disappointed hopes and intractable problems, and emerge unscathed. Vietnam, Cambodia, Tiananmen—always dead bodies, always people fleeing. Slowly one comes to feel that nothing is of any use, that the time for justice will never come. In the end it seemed to me that words—words used over and over, always describing the same situations, the same massacres, the faces of the dead, the tears of the survivors—had utterly lost their meaning. They had come to sound, every syllable of them, like the rattle of broken crocks.

  It was natural to feel depressed in such circumstances, natural for anyone who still has an idea of what life could be and is not. Depression becomes a right when we look around us and see nothing and no one to offer us a spark of inspiration, when the world seems to be sliding into a morass of imbecility and cheap materialism, with no more ideals, no more faiths, no more dreams. One has nothing great to believe in any longer, no mentor to emulate.

  Rarely has humanity, as in these times, been without true leaders, guiding lights. Where today do we find a great philosopher, a great painter, writer, sculptor? The few who spring to mind are merely the products of publicity and marketing.

  Politics more than any other sphere, especially in the West, is in the hands of mediocrities—thanks precisely to democracy, which by now has become an aberration from the original idea. Once it was a question of voting whether or not to go to war with Sparta, and then going there in person, perhaps to die. For most people today democracy means showing up every four or five years to put a cross on a piece of paper to elect someone who, precisely because he needs to please such numbers, must perforce be average, mediocre and banal—as majorities always are. If a truly exceptional person ever came along—someone with ideas out of the ordinary, with a perspective beyond pleasing everyone with promises of happiness—he or she would never be elected, would never win the vote of the majority.

  And art, that shortcut to the perception of greatness? Even art no longer helps people to understand the essence of things. Music now seems to be made for the ears, not the soul; painting is often an offense to the eyes; literature, even literature, is increasingly ruled by the laws of the market. Who reads poetry anymore? Its exalting power has been clean forgotten! And yet a poem can light a fire in the breast as strong as the fire of love. Better than whiskey, better than Valium or Prozac, a poem can lift the spirit, because it raises the vantage point from which we see the world. If you feel lonely you can find more company by reading poetry than by switching on the television.

  Angela says that if she could eliminate one of this century’s inventions, even before the atomic bomb she would choose television. She is not entirely wrong. Television lowers our capacity for concentration, blunts the passions and impedes reflection, imposing itself as the main—almost the only—vehicle of knowledge. And yet no truth is more illusory than that of television, which transforms every event and every emotion into a spectacle, with the result that no one can be moved anymore, or indignant about what is going on. Television has loaded us with huge masses of information, but left us morally ignorant. It distracts us, helps the time pass—but is that what we really want?

  The more one looks around, the more one sees that our way of living is becoming more and mo
re senseless. Everyone is running, but where to? And why? Many believe that in this race for material things we are losing our old pleasures. But who has the courage to say: “Stop! Let’s look for another way”? If anyone did, most people—themselves depressed—would take him for a madman. If we were lost in a forest or a desert we would surely start looking for a way out. Why not do the same with this blessed progress, that lengthens our lives, makes us richer, healthier and better-looking, but deep down less and less happy?

  It is not surprising that depression has become such a common illness. In a way it is almost heartening—it shows that inside people there is still a yearning for humanity.

  At the end of five years in Tokyo, with its incessant noise and crowds, I felt as if I were poisoned, and decided I had to heal myself. After closing up the house and sending the furniture and books to Thailand, I shaved my head and went like a pilgrim to climb Mount Fuji. I wrote my last article on the disquieting character of Japan from the height of that ever less sacred mountain, and then withdrew to a forest refuge in the province of Ibaragi. For a month I had no one to talk to except my dog Baolì, whom I had taken with me. I spent hours reading, listening to the wind in the trees, watching butterflies, enjoying the silence. After years of constantly thinking about the fate of the Vietnamese, the Cambodians, Communism, the Chinese, the threat of Japan, my children’s future, problems of family, friends and the world, at last I had time to have time. Nature, marvelous nature, reached out a hand to me and put me back together.

  On my return to Europe I went and saw a famous doctor. “If from time to time the weight of the world should seem too much to bear, take one of these,” he said, and gave me some Prozac. From then on, that packet always traveled with me, along with my passport, checkbook and driving license. I never once opened it, and with time it became a sort of good-luck charm, like the oil of the dukun, or the strip of green paper given me by the shaman in Singapore. Little did I imagine how useful it would be to me one day.